I have to admit that WWII France was not at all on my radar for Kristin Hannah.

The only truth was whatever you could make someone believe.

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.

I have to admit that WWII France was not at all on my radar for Kristin Hannah.

I see the emphasis on a lot of ideas and I know that's directed at me. [Megan Chance] come up with an idea, hone it, and write it. I come up with thirty ideas, flesh each one out, research each one, come up with characters, and then decide I don't like it.

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

[ 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.