The real genesis for the book was actually an incident at Los Alamos, where they had lost some classified material. That was where the book idea came from, then I turned it into a story about Emma's past.
Some of the most groundbreaking research about the Easter Island statues came from a woman who grew up as a Quaker child of privilege in England, Katherine Routledge. Her early 20th century work is chronicled in the new Jo Anne Van Tilburg biography "Among Stone Giants." Van Tilburg says her initial inspiration for the book came from her own work as an Easter Island archaeologist for the last 20 years, following in Routledge's footsteps...
The real genesis for the book was actually an incident at Los Alamos, where they had lost some classified material. That was where the book idea came from, then I turned it into a story about Emma's past. 
