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Goodreads asked Leigh Goodison:

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

Leigh Goodison The premise for Wild Ones was based, in part, on a story I read in 1998 about a series of suicides by teenagers in a youth correctional facility. Stark School, the fictional correctional facility in Wild Ones, was inspired by the Hillcrest Youth Correctional Facility in Salem, Oregon. It opened in 1914, the state’s first reform school for girls. It was turned into a co-ed facility in the ’70′s, but in 2008 became an all-male school. In fact, Stark School in my book is a co-ed facility. I have actually never visited Hillcrest, but my idea for Wild Ones was ‘what if the girls were actually happiest at the state-run school and it was the possibility of being sent away from their friends and to another foster home that they dreaded?’

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