the how you feel about the father is more of a stretch but you see that even in -- i'm thinking patty hurst. people who have captors and love their captors sort of thing much you adapt to the situation in which you are placed, i believe. and i don't believe that i don't believe that my ancestors loved the people that raped them. i do believe that over the generations that my great grand mother emily did love a frenchman who courted her. and that was a different kind of relationship. but i wanted to show all of those relationships and i had 4 generations to work with. >> it's hard to judge or even understand something that happened then based on the way we look through things today. >> that was the most difficult things in the writing of this book. my first draft was so through 20th century eyes. how i would react if i was placed in those situations. i did a lot of reading, a lot of research, nonfiction and a lot of fiction reading to try to understand that era, that time, the relationships to try to get a sense of what it was like to live then. i transported myself back and tried to shed a