So the Tremayne house is a total fabrication, though other landmarks are described as accurately as I was able to make them. I also wanted to incorporate some modern traditions, like the Wednesday gig races. These haven’t been going on for a hundred years, but it’s a tradition I thought reasonably could have had its start in those days, and it’s such a wonderful example of island community that I couldn’t resist putting it in.

The Isles of Scilly were, historically, a hugely popular place for pirates and smugglers to congregate, given their location. So of course I had to include a bit of pirate lore! And Mucknell was certainly the most notorious of the Scillies’ pirate residents. After decades of working for the East India Company, he seized the excuse of the English Civil War to lead a mutiny, steal the Company flagship, the John, and start preying on other East Indiamen with the excuse that it was for the exiled Prince of Wales. And the prince not only gave him his blessing, but he named him a vice admiral . . . of a pirate fleet. How fascinating is that? For many years, no one knew what happened to the John after its last battle, nor the haul that it had in its hold. Modern evidence suggests that it was purposefully beached and emptied, but there’s still speculation about that booty. Is Mucknell’s treasure still buried somewhere? Or did he really turn it all over to the Crown? Well, I have my opinions. . . .

I also need to thank my old friend Meagan Fitzgerald for being open with me about what life is like in a household with mito kids. I knew I wanted Morgan to have had a condition they didn’t even have a name for at the time, and as I learned more about mitochondrial disease, I knew this was something I wanted to explore, if only in part. Because not only would Morgan have been hugely affected by the limitations, the illnesses that would always find him, and the always-present fear of an early death, but the whole family would have been altered by the care he required and the monetary output. I wanted a hero who had been forever affected by loving a brother with a debilitating illness—and a brother who had loved him so much that he’d selflessly preserved as much of the family legacy as he could so that Oliver would have something to inherit after Morgan’s death. Though I couldn’t name his condition in the story, I pray the slivers of attention I gave to it honor the families who fight those battles daily.