When I was talking to a friend about my two new books, Lost Mothers and Every New Beginning, she asked me what had been the original idea for Lost Mothers, that first spark that had lit the fire that became the novel. This is my favorite question—as I imagine it is for many writers—because it is so easy to answer. In my experience, there is always a moment, an incident, a conversation, even the appearance of a stranger, something a writer saw or experienced that sticks with her and either slowly or quickly grows into a story idea, a group of characters, an expanding tree of story lines. I know what the original idea was for every book I’ve written.