I had read a lot of books on World War II, but I didn't know that downed airmen had hiked over the frozen peaks of the Pyrenees Mountains in shoes that didn't fit, in clothes that weren't warm enough, with German and Spanish patrols searching for them.

I do not often follow my characters off on tangents or change my story on a whim. I have an outline which I follow quite sternly...for a good long while. Then it turns out in some way to be insurmountably wrong and I am forced to re-think every component. Usually at this point I throw hundreds of pages away.

[ The Nightingale ]ended up being a huge undertaking - a daunting amount of research on a subject that many people know intimately, a country I had not yet been to when I first started planning the book, an entire war.

I am more than happy to invite my five favorite fictional characters. Let's see. First on my list is Sam Gamgee from The Lord of The Rings. Sam is a beautiful character; in him, we find the profound heroism of an ordinary person. He epitomizes the saying that courage isn't not being afraid, courage is going anyway. I just love that.

The woman who led [downed airmen] was named Andrée De Jongh and her story - one of heroism and peril and astounding courage - became the inspiration for my novel.

Logic only tells us what's there; it can't really address what isn't. Even the most devoted empiricist must admit that we have no hope of understanding the universe. Some things are unknowable.

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