No. I grew up in Chicago, which left little opportunity for gold mining. We took our daughter to Columbia, a restored California Gold Rush town, when she was about ten. She wasn’t much interested in panning for gold but she was crazy about the mules

Q:

A: There is no good answer to this question. Names just pop into my head, often before the story does. But there is a story behind Rodzina: When I was ten, my Grandma Lipski took me to the Polish cemetery in Chicago to show me her mother’s grave. In front of a gravestone marked Rodzina Czerwinski, she sat and cried. Many years later when I was writing a book about a Polish girl from Chicago, I decided to call her Rodzina after my great-grandmother. I checked with my father to make sure I had the spelling correct, and he told me that rodzina was not her first name but was the Polish word for family. The gravestone marked the resting place of the rodzins Czerwinski, or Czerwinski family. The book Rodzina is all about the search for family, so I decided that while Rodzina was not my great- grandmother’s name, it was the perfect name for the girl in my story. And so she is Rodzina.

From a recent interview:

Question: You were born in and spent the early part of your childhood in Illinois. What drew you to writing about Rodzina, who set off on an orphan train from Chicago to an unknown home?

Answer: In a bookstore in Berkeley, I found a book about the orphan trains. The cover showed a giant locomotive and a line of children, holding little suitcases. Their faces were so frightened and brave and hopeful. I knew there was a book there, and I was right.