Goodreads asked Holly Michael:

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

Holly Michael Crooked Lines was inspired from accounts of my husband and clergy friends who came of age in a religious order in India in the mid-1980s. Their tales as young seminarians (80s and into the 1990s and beyond) fascinated me—serving in the slums of India, meeting Mother Theresa, rescuing youth out of radical communist situations, working in orphanages, etc. I laughed along with them at their hilarious Community Day stories in their late twenties in the religious community. Of course, I fictionalized the stories (some less than others), but they give a good glimpse into a perspective of how life was in this time and place in Christian India. After hearing the fascinating stories about life in a religious community in India, I was inspired to write a novel portraying the similarities between people, even though they may live in totally different cultures. The emotions, feelings, and life situations of a 16 or 20 or 25 year old in India can certainly run parallel to a characters across the world from them.

Rebecca, the character from America struggles with guilt over her sister's tragic death. Though she's running from God and Sagai is running to God to become a priest, the two encounter similar experiences.

In Crooked Lines, Father Michael, who visits the US becomes a pen pal with Rebecca and connects the two together by first asking each to pray for the other. (Father Michael is based on a real life character (his real name).

flag