Goodreads asked Annette Ranald:

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

Annette Ranald I heard somebody on a TV sitcom make a joke about the Donner Party, so I got curious and started researching. I soon came to believe that Louis Keseberg, the arch-type villain of the piece, was probably not guilty of a lot that he was blamed for, including several murders. The idea of telling the story from his perspective came from the work of Prof. Clay Jenkinson, a lecturer at North Dakota State University. He lectures on Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, Meriwether Lewis, and other characters, dressed up as and talking from their perspective. I've seen his Jefferson and Roosevelt lectures and got the idea to write as though I'm Louis, telling the story.

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