Goodreads asked Tim Merriman:

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

Tim Merriman We wrote The Leopard Tree after watching a Bill Clinton special about HIV in Africa. The touching explanations of young people about how they contracted the disease suggested a potential story. Most fiction starts with "what if." We combined the improbable journey of three orphans from Africa on an odyssey across America with their attachment to their only book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. We have worked and traveled in E. Africa (Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda and Malawi) on eight occasions and have met people working with HIV and malaria programs, so we had some sense of who we were introducing as characters.

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