Goodreads asked Ellen Baker:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Ellen Baker As a person who’s lived all my life in small towns, I started wondering whether it would be possible to keep a significant secret across a long lifetime, and then what the consequences would be once that secret came out. I knew right away that my small town would be in northern Minnesota, where I was born and which still feels to me like ‘home.’ I also quickly decided that my main character would be a very conventional-seeming pillar of the community with an excellent reputation. I wanted her to be someone with a great deal to lose; someone whose fall from grace – if she did indeed fall – would be spectacular. Then I had to start to try to imagine what sorts of secrets would be consequential enough to still matter, after decades.

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