How much is fact; how much is fiction?
That two women, an East Coast widow and a Parisian, met in Paris, homesteaded in Kansas and lived in twin houses for almost ten years before their friendship ended. That’s about all I knew or wanted to know until told myself the story. Those women had to become my creations; only then could I delve more into their backgrounds. Happily my instincts proved right on the few things that were known. For instance, the American really came from New York and they really had prospered, becoming the country’s second largest landowners – just as I had imagined. Let me quickly add that Huddleston, Kansas, in my book is Hutchinson, Kansas, only in the way that a brief sketch resembles a finished oil painting. I took the foundations of the place and constructed my own edifice.
