Where did the idea for Walk Two Moons originate? Were the characters conceived before the setting and plot?
Walk Two Moons had a rather bumpy evolution. After over two years of attempting a story whose first narrator was Mary Lou Finney, and whose next narrator was Phoebe Winterbottom, I rediscovered a fortune cookie message in the bottom of my purse: “Don’t judge a man until you’ve walked two moons in his moccasins.” The suggestion of a journey in that message sparked the third attempt, this time with Salamanca as narrator, and incorporating the two previous stories within hers. I read that when you were a child, like Salamanca, you took a trip to Lewiston, Idaho. How was you rexperience similar to and/or different from Salamanca’s trip? It was similar in that we followed the same route that Salamanca does, and I was transformed by the experience of seeing our huge country and its beautiful landscapes. It was different in that none of the things that happen to Salamanca along the way happened to me! The characters in Walk Two Moons all experience loss to some degree. How can you so accurate
