Goodreads asked Harriet Levin:

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

Harriet Levin I met Michael Majok Kuch through a writing project with One Book Philadelphia and he asked me to write a book about his life. I decided to do it in the novel form because a lot of the events happened when he was very young and he did not remember them all clearly enough for the book to be a memoir. Plus I love novels and think that the ups and downs of his experience fleeing war and searching for his mother is best conveyed in novel form.

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