Goodreads asked Barbara Hawkins:

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

Barbara Hawkins I started writing a pseudo-memoir about my time in Guatemala, where I lived during their civil war in the 1970’s and 1980’s. It was too close to my heart, so I had to switch to something I wanted to tell a story about but also felt had a worthwhile message. My father had always wanted to write a book about the time he spent in World War II but died before he could reach that goal. So I thought I’d give it a try.
I knew he was stationed in Sri Lanka, but didn't find much to write about there. So I gravitated to what I knew best, engineering and jungles. The story of the all-black construction regiment building Stilwell’s Road grabbed me and of course who could not be mesmerized by American’s first guerrilla supported units: Merrill’s Marauders and the Mars Task Force? Half-way through the book my sister found my dad’s diary from the War. He was actually in the Mars Task Force. The scene with Lt. Jack Knight was taken from my dad’s diary and the last scene in the book was from a conversation we had just before he died. It was the only time he ever spoke of the War.

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