Goodreads asked Peter Boody:

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

Peter Boody The timing of events in my life -- especially leaving an extremely demanding job -- opened the door for me to think and write about an old fantasy of mine: meeting someone from American history and taking them on a tour of the country. Jefferson appeals to me the most, for all the contradictions, ironies and questions in his fascinating and well documented life (except for the things he and his descendants quashed). Monticello is a living testimony to his brilliance; I love the place. How great would it be to meet him there?
I started writing out this fantasy with a fictional narrator, a retired history teacher named Jack Arrowsmith, a widower in a state of denial about his personal collapse after also losing his only child, a grown son, not long after his wife's death.
There are layers to the parallels between Jack and Jefferson that inspired me to carry on with the writing. It was more than just a silly fantasy and I loved being in the thick of it, writing about complicated people in the struggle to find passion and joy and purpose in a world of grief and death.

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