Goodreads asked Ellen Byron:

What mystery in your own life could be a plot for a book?

Ellen Byron My grandfather disappeared in 1933. The family legend is that he left my father sitting on the apartment stoop after telling him, "I'll be back to take you swimming." When my grandmother came home from work hours later, my father was still sitting on the stoop, and no one ever saw my grandfather again. He was very low-level mob and had already been in jail for embezzlement. Money from the family business disappeared with him, so he either left to start a new life, or more likely he was "done in," because when my grandmother went to look for him, his "associates" told her she was "best off look in the bottom of the river." Someday, as God is my witness, I will write this story. Because no one in my family would ever talk about my grandfather except people who married into the family, and I've spent my life wondering what happened to him.

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