I came back from living in Asia in 1989 and moved to the Eastern Shore. On the farm next to my property there lived two 12-year-old boys who were best friends. One was an African-American boy and the other was white. As they got closer to their teen-aged years their parents were worried about their friendship. The white boy's family were concerned because the other boy was getting into a lot of trouble with the law. And the African-American boy's family were worried for the same reason. I also met a man who owned a large melon farm. He had been implicated in the murder of a Mexican labor organizer and that crime had never been solved. So these were real-life incidents that gave me the idea for the story. Another factor was that I had been living in India and Pakistan and other parts of Asia for many years and I expected that racism would be gone by the time I came home. I had gone away during the Civil Rights era, and it seemed we were making so much progress. I guess I thought prejudice was dying out, and I was surprised to find that this wasn't so. I like to write about things that come from real life. In order for me to care about a story and the people in it the characters have to seem real. So I guess that's why real stories appeal to me.