Goodreads asked Jan Steckel:

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

Jan Steckel My grandmother had always told me that my great grandfather, her father, would leave the family at times after he lost money gambling, and go away until he could make enough money to come home in style. She was angry that her mother always took him back. In doing genealogical research recently, however, I found a US Census during my grandmother's childhood showing him as an inmate on a prison/asylum island in New York's harbor. Apparently he and my great-grandmother kept from my grandmother and great-aunt where he really was during at least one of these absences. Someday I'd like to write about him and how he ended up on that island.

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