My dad was a wonderful doctor and I always aspired to be like him. Yet when I was nearing the end of medical school I began to discover that my true fulfilment lay in aged care.

After my grandfather and best friend Fred was diagnosed with dementia, I followed my heart into his nursing home, where I became the social support coordinator so we could spend more time together. It was a joy to eat lunch with him every day and belt out our favourite show tunes as I wheeled him down the hall.

Pa was a wordsmith and an inspiration to me as a writer. Right up until his early eighties, he wrote poetry and letters for my gorgeous grandmother, Dawn. When dementia took away that ability, I became his pen and helped him write to her, so he could continue loving her in the way I knew he wanted to. Despite his dementia, he never lost his sense of humour, the words to songs, or his adoration for his wife and family.

Having previously developed a community cooking program for older widowed men,
I was acutely aware of the high rates of depression and social isolation among senior citizens. Passionate about challenging assumptions of what older people enjoy and are capable of, I sought creative ways of providing purpose and connection for each resident, of the mind that just because life ends in a nursing home, living doesn’t have to. I was privileged to care for residents with varying stages of dementia and provide support to their families. This experience equipped me with skills and knowledge that I later passed on to my protagonist.

After injury left me unable to return to aged care, I began to write about it, channelling my
experience and love for older people onto the page. People over eighty are underrepresented
in literature, so I wanted to create not just an elderly character, but a much-needed elderly
hero who encourages people to see the good in humanity.

My grandfather provided the perfect inspiration, and my protagonist Fred not only
shares his name, but also his kind, selfless, and endearing nature. Pa had countless strengths, but his poker face wasn’t one of them! He was so honest and full of integrity that he even found it hard to play a card game that required bluffing. Plot stems from conflict, so I contemplated what would happen if you placed such a man in a situation where he was desperate enough to deceive (if he believed he wasn’t hurting anyone). Doppelgängers and cases of mistaken identity have always fascinated me. I began developing the idea of one man being able to redeem another man’s life, even after death. The story grew quickly from there.

My grandparents had a love story for the ages, and I wanted to capture that in the novel. They radiated gratitude and were always thankful for the smallest of things. Though their names went to the characters of Fred and Dawn, they also breathed life into the personalities and stories of Albert and Val. When he moved into care, Pa would always look for Nan when she wasn’t there and became quite anxious when he couldn’t find her and often asked where he’d parked the car. Throughout their marriage, they loved dancing together, and I was delighted to organise a dance at the nursing home and see them in each other’s arms again. Nanna was a chocoholic and Pa always gave her the chocolatey froth from his cappuccino!

They say, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade”. To make lemonade you need sugar, and for me, humour is that sugar, making the unbearable bearable. It’s always been a pivotal part of my family's life, so when it came to writing a story that touches on deep and often heartbreaking issues, it was only natural that my grandfather's cheeky humour would be a prominent feature.

I’ve been told that women sometimes marry people like their fathers. For me, that skipped a generation, and I married Josh, my very own Fred. There were many things I needed to research to write this book, but the feeling of being cherished wasn’t one of them.

The plot, setting and characters in the novel are fictional. But the love? That’s entirely real.