Years ago, I wrote a short (800 word) story and submitted the tale to Woman’s World magazine. The story was rejected. But I couldn’t let go of the idea that was born out of my daughter’s stories about life in the Colorado mountains. One of her jobs was to teach young skiers. Most of her little students were children of wealthy families and visiting celebrities.

She drove me up the mountain to see the ski areas where she worked. The views were spectacular. On the way back down valley, she pointed out a wooded area that had an old wooden bridge that went over the Roaring Fork River and snaked up a hill to disappear over the crest. It turns out a Saudi prince owned one of the most expensive properties in the U.S at the end of that road, on the other side of the rise. A few years later the 56,000 square foot estate on 90,000 acres sold for forty-nine million dollars, down from the original asking price of one-hundred and thirty-nine million.

The germ of an idea for The Prince’s Son was born. I purposely did not put a prince in the story I wrote for Woman’s World, since they like feel-good stories about people just like you and me. And prince’s don’t fit that category