Goodreads asked Cathy Raymond:

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

Cathy Raymond I will answer this question with the first part of my Author's Note at the end of my novel.

I first learned about the role music played in concentration camps when I was a music student at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. One day I heard a recording of a haunting piece of music--Olivier Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time". I was amazed to learn that Messiaen had composed the entire piece in a concentration camp on half-broken instruments, the only ones available to him. It was unfathomable to me how anyone could write such beautiful music under such horrible circumstances, and I started reading about other musicians who had composed and performed in concentration camps.

As I read more about the role of music in concentration camps, I started to imagine an idea for a novel. I read a lot of books and listened to a lot of music from that time and eventually I was ready to write my story.

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