Inside Information
In real life, Brunonia’s father, Jack, also suffered from Parkinson’s disease in much the same fashion that the character Finch did in The Map of True Places.
Brunonia’s initial inspiration for The Map of True Places came from sitting with a cup of coffee on the Derby wharf while watching two riggers climb up and down the ropes on the Friendship. They thought occurred to her that they looked like dancing spiders as they appeared to run and slide all over ropes attached to the ship’s three masts. Given that they were hundred’s of feet above the level of the water, she wondered what it would be like to be a rigger on sailing ship modeled after the great vessels of Salem’s Golden Age of Sail. Within a few minutes, the character Hawk was born and the first seeds of The Map of True Places were planted in her imagination.