I absolute adore epic journeys that require a protagonist to fight for every victory in the hopes of finding triumph.

I love what I call "re-imagining," where I throw everything up in the air and let it fall in a different way. It's not the most efficient way to write a book, but it's how I find the story.

Honestly, I really didn't want to take on World War II France, but when I came across the story of a nineteen-year-old Belgian woman who created an escape route out of Nazi-Occupied France, I was hooked.

I love women being the heroes of the piece. There is just something so dramatic and important about this story [The Nightingale ].

The women of the French Resistance astounded me. Isabelle and Vianne [from The Nightingale] are my homage to those brave and forgotten women.

In doing the research, I found myself consumed by a single, overwhelming question, as relevant today as it was seventy years ago: When would I, as a wife and mother, risk my life - and more importantly, my child's life - to save a stranger? That question is at the very heart of The Nightingale. I hope that everyone who reads the novel will ask themselves the question.

Sometimes a story grabs hold of you and won't let go.