Goodreads asked Anita Diamant:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Anita Diamant I had driven past Rockport Lodge a hundred times without taking much notice. A three-story white clapboard farmhouse with a sign out front, it looked like other bed-and-breakfasts that line South Street in Rockport, Massachusetts.

One morning, I spotted a friend walking out the front door and pulled over. Pattie said she was working as the Rockport Lodge cook that summer – but it turned out that the place was nothing like other inns. It had been founded in the early 1900s to provide inexpensive chaperoned holidays to girls of modest means, and even in the 1980s the policy was still “women only” and the rates incredibly cheap.

The Lodge’s best days were behind it and over the next few years, I watched it fall apart. The paint peeled, the shutters broke, the lawn got shaggy and one summer, the doors stayed closed and weeds sprouted in the gutters. I peeked through the windows and shredded, sun-bleached curtains and saw heavy oak tables and chairs still waiting for the dinner crowd, puzzles and books stacked on shelves and magazines; hand-lettered signs were tacked up beside an ancient black telephone, but I couldn’t make out the words. The place was like a steamer trunk full of secrets – and stories.

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