The idea for this plot came from a “what if” in
my own life. Many times
that’s what starts a story for me, the question “what if?”
My husband, Allen, and I grew up in the same small bedroom
community of
La Puente,
California. (He was born in Kansas but came here when he was six months
old.)
La Puente
isn’t a large town. Back
when we were kids it might have had twenty-five thousand or so people.
But there were lots of kids and LOTS of schools.
So, though we lived in the same town, went to the same city park,
saw fireworks from the same bleachers every Fourth of July, both went to
(different) Southern Baptist churches, we didn’t meet until we were
fifteen years old. My
parents left First Southern Baptist Church
of
La Puente
(probably because of a church split—Baptists love to split off and
make new churches) and started going to Immanuel Baptist church (about
two miles away). I met Allen
in Sunday School. Over the
years we’ve speculated about how we’d probably run across each
other’s paths many times over the years before we met.
How weird is that to think that you’d be standing next to a kid
at the Little League game snack bar and not realize
you’d eventually marry him?
That’s what got me started—what if Gabe had
crossed Benni’s path years before she
met him after Jack’s death? Sunshine
and Shadow started with that solitary question.
