From a Q & A at her publisher's website:
Q. What inspired you to write this novel?--Marshal Zeringue
A. The honest answer is, I don’t know. The novel came from a short story, and the short story came from a single sentence, which came into my mind one morning without explanation and out of nowhere. It was, ‘My great grandmother fixed a book-rest to her spinning wheel so that she could read while she was spinning.’This was true – fact not fiction – though I still have no idea why I suddenly thought of it. My mother had mentioned our great grandmother often when we were children, but that was a long time ago and I hadn’t given her a thought for years.
There was quite a gap between the short story and the novel, and during that time both of my parents died and my children flew the nest. I spent even more time than usual, then, thinking about issues of family, home and childhood, and I have no doubt that that had an influence on the novel.
Q. Do you see Kate’s character as being autobiographical to a certain extent and if so, in what ways?
A. If you’d asked if the story was autobiographical – no. Virtually nothing that takes place in the novel happened in my life. But you asked about Kate’s character, which is harder to answer.
She is much more serious than I, but circumstances have made her so. She has been damaged by loss, and the damage has made her rather self-righteous and judgmental – I hope I am not quite as hard on other people as she is. Having said that, I do share some of her prejudices; the work ethic is strong in both of us; I expect a lot of myself and of those around me; I am not by nature tolerant, easygoing or laissez-faire. But fear of further loss has caused Kate to limit her world. Academic study is safe, it cannot betray her; love, on the other hand, would make her vulnerable again. So she keeps the barriers up, to protect herself. Life has been much kinder to me than it was to her.
As for other similarities; I have...[read on]
