Goodreads asked Rosemary Simpson:

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

Rosemary Simpson I had a character in mind and I knew what was going to happen to her. In fact, she was very insistent about her story. What I didn't know was where and when she lived. Then New York had a record-breaking snowfall, and in reading about it I came across references to the Great Blizzard of 1888. It roared into the northeast without warning in mid-March of that year, taking 200 lives in New York City alone, twice that number in the region. This was an era when electricity and the telephone were just beginning to change the way people lived, when automobiles hadn't yet replaced horse-drawn carriages. It was the Gilded Age, a time of great opulence, crushing poverty, and immense social change. As I looked at sketches and photographs of the storm's aftermath that appeared in contemporary magazines and newspapers, I knew where Prudence MacKenzie belonged. And what better place to conceal a body than under huge drifts of heavy snow?

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