Goodreads asked Mona Rodriguez:

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

Mona Rodriguez Looking back I think Forty Years In A Day was a catharsis for me. A way to remember my family, especially my parents. I’ve had this particular story churning in my head for many years, sparked by the stories of my family’s past. FORTY YEARS IN A DAY begins in 1900 and follows the incredible journey of a young mother and her four children as they escape from Italy into the streets of Hell’s Kitchen, New York. That woman was my grandmother. The story ends with a woman who knows the father of her children is living a double life with another, but she loves him so much that she overlooks the arrangement rather than forfeit the man. Those were my parents. In between are the stories that I had heard from family members who had lived through an era that we can only read about, intertwined with twists of fiction and sensationalism to have some fun.
We don’t realize what our ancestors went through to make life better for themselves and for us. What they faced was incredible—the living conditions, poverty, disease—and their work ethic was admirable. Although I had started with the intention of writing a story about my father’s family, it turned into a novel. There was so much more I wanted people to know about this fascinating era.

flag