Goodreads asked Annelies Pool:

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

Annelies Pool Free Love is a story about a women recovering from alcoholism in Yellowknife (Northwest Territories, Canada) in the 1980s. I am a recovering person myself so, although all the characters and events are fictional, this story is very personal to me. It has taken me 10 years to write but I have been thinking about it for a lifetime.

Like many northern and isolated communities, Yellowknife is a party town and alcoholism is a huge and very visible problem here. What is not so visible is the recovery community which mostly operates under the radar.

I wanted to write about the recovery community, about how people are pulled out of despair and learn to lead responsible lives; about the love that develops as people help each other; the bonds people form across differences in culture, religion and status. I wanted to write a story of hope to offset the stories of despair that are so readily seen in the streets (of Yellowknife and communities everywhere), and while "Free Love" does not shy away from the tragedy of alcoholism, it is essentially a story of hope. This story of hope plays out not only in Yellowknife but in communities around the world.

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