Читать книгу The Real Allie Newman - Janice Carter - Страница 3

Dear Reader,

The one question that is most frequently asked of me is, “Where do you get your ideas?”

Often, that’s a tough one to answer, simply because once in a while—if I’m lucky!—an idea for a story line just occurs to me. But generally, ideas for novels are not so easily acquired. I firmly believe that writers are observers of life. We tend to sit back and watch events take place around us—whether in a family context, at parties with friends or even sitting in a train station. There’s always something or someone to see and observe. And with observation comes—in my case, anyway—speculation.

Why is that woman sitting on the bench looking so glum? What’s going through my young nephew’s mind as he listens, transfixed, to a story recounted by his favorite uncle?

The questions go on, eventually leading to a story. Sometimes I find the seed of a story in a newspaper or magazine article. Such was the case with The Real Allie Newman. I’d read an article about two sisters in their twenties who discovered their father had abducted them as small children. Unknown to them, there’d been another whole family searching for them for years—including a mother.

That article got me thinking. What would it be like to learn that your whole childhood had been based on a lie? That the parent you adored was not so exemplary after all? Most of all, would you ever be able to reconnect with the other side of your family?

These were some of the questions I tried to address in this novel. As always, my deep and abiding love and respect for family—the ties that really do bind—motivated me to write The Real Allie Newman.

Janice Carter