When I was a little girl in Michigan, we used to go to the Hillsdale College Library and take out books and records. (You know those big round discs with holes in the middle that go round and round and play music?) One of those records was a violin solo written by Ralph Vaughan Williams called The Lark Ascending. We would listen to it over and over again, and it sort of sunk in to my psyche. I still come back to it again and again, especially these days, because it was one of my inspirations for my new novel, 27.