The Story starts....

Aspen to Montague, Michigan Isn't a Quick Trip

For a while, I was making the trip from Aspen to Montague, Michigan more than I ever expected, but since I love being there, mostly with my family and dad, since it was his favorite place!!

And if you've never tried to get from Aspen to a small town in Michigan, it's a journey. We're talking three flights sometimes, or a direct flight to Chicago, then a four-hour rental car drive along the Lake Michigan shoreline, but mostly two flights with a layover long enough to think of a book idea:)

It's a lot of airport steps. A lot of delays. A lot of staring out windows.

And a lot of time inside my own head.

My dad was in Michigan. I was going back and forth to be with him since while he was sick, but yet we always seemed to gt cabin work done, he loved his John Deer and mowing the grass- most of all fishing together by the White River.

And every single trip, every layover, every middle seat, every too-early morning flight, parts of a story started growing in my mind. Characters. A cabin. A grandmother's handwritten notes. A map made in the 1950s. A woman named Clara who has to go find something she didn't even know was lost.

I didn't write any of it down at first. I just let it live in my head, getting bigger and more real every time I flew out.