Sarju Shrestha Mehri asked Paula McLain:

Writing a historical fiction seems to be a challenge as you do not want to compromise the facts with fiction. How did you manage to write the balance of what is real in Beryl Markham and what you created? Love.. love your work.. please keep on writing and very anxious to your new book.

Paula McLain Hello, Sarju, and thanks so much for loving my work. That means the world to me. I use my research to shape the book; the facts are the bones, the skeleton, and I stay true to them for plotting. I don't make up major events, and so far I haven't made up any fictional characters for my real-life characters to interact with. But I do use my imagination to fill in everything I can't possibly know....like how Beryl was feeling and what she was thinking, and what propelled her decisions. I have to psychologize her. To take the decisions, the accomplishments, the relationships and build a story that works on its own terms, and also reveals who she was in some core way. The challenge of that is what keeps me interested in this genre. I learn so much!

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