Jamie asked Charles Martin:

You write such deeply memorable characters- Miss Ella, Uncle Willee, etc. Do any of them come from people you know in your life? Do they have any basis in reality?

Charles Martin Years ago, I began looking at my Acknowledgments as a way to tell part of this story. If you read the back of Wrapped, you'll see part of this story. Momma Ella is sort of a mixture of two people: my mom and a lady that used to work for my family. It feels weird to say "worked" because she was family. Loved us tenderly. And us, her. Anyway, Momma Ella grew out of her. Unc grew out of my dad. Dad is from West Texas and most of the Unc'isms you read in the book spilled straight from his mouth. The interesting thing is that in my mind he doesn't look like my dad. He might sound a bit like him but there are differences. Unc has taken on a persona all his own. I bump into him every now and then about 4 in the morning when I get up and am walking around my house. Course, I bump into Miss Ella and Bryce and a host of others. ;-) Lately, I've been bumping into Charlie Finn.

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