And

he fought the bull.

And on one dramatic pass, he flashed my great-grandmother a dashing smile like, oh, look what I can do.

And right then, the bull turned his horns and impaled him in the side and the thigh, hooked him, and launched him into the air.

Well, the medics got to him right away, and they were able to save his life.

But he had deadly mortal wounds, and he could not go into the Amazon the very next day.

And so my great-grandmother decided to stay by his side as his nurse and help him get healthy again.

The book itself, obviously, how does it resonate then with the younger audience that's kind of reading it or, you know, connecting with it?

Can you share with us a little bit of who he was and why his story stayed with your family for generations?

Oh, my goodness.

So my great-grandfather, he left his homeland of Galway, Ireland, with his younger brother, John, and they ventured into the open oceans, across the Atlantic, right down around, uh, South America to the Pacific to, to Peru, and they were in search of the lost city of Incan gold.

Well, to get there, you land in the Port of Lima, and to get to the Amazons of Peru, you've got to cross through a town called Arequipa, and that's where he met my great-grandmother.

They met, they fell in love.

They have an amazing meeting story, which I wrote out in the novellas.

Amazing meetup story.

You know, you gotta give them some, some meat in their teeth to say, "Oh, you think it's this way, but listen to this person's perspective, why things were not as they all seem." Oh, I can't wait to get this book and the series, because it is a series, correct?

How much of the story is factual, and how much of it comes from your imagination?

[laughs] This is a fascinating question, because, um, I'm currently in Florida right now on a book tour, and we drove down from Virginia, so it's about a 10, 11-hour drive, and, uh, we were listening to my audiobook for Lost, um, the whole family in the car.

And my husband, uh, he knows my story and he knows, um, the book, you know, that I wrote.

He knows my family.

But as he was listening to this book, at the very end after it's all done, I have a very special, um, inclusement in there about my true family history.

Mm.

And so writing the story, I mean, it was just, it just, it was, it hit home so hard for me every moment.

Um, and the way I wanted to share what I was feeling and what we have felt through the generations, um, is almost perfectly put into the book because my book opens in the prologue, uh, 15 years before the actual story takes place.

Tell me about what you started writing then.

Well, our, you know, I keep telling our family story to people, I mean, to my private lesson students and everybody's like, that sounds like a movie, like a Netflix show or something.

So true story.

My great-grandfather in 1910, an Irish treasure hunter, left his hometown of Ireland with his younger brother, traveled across the open seas to Peru.

And when you land in Lima, Peru, to get to the Amazons, where he was treasure-seeking the lost city of ink and gold, you have to come across a little town called Arequipa.

And that's where he met my great grandmother, Yodosha.

They fell in love.

So are you, like, talking about your book, if you had to compare it to something, like, are there authors that you're inspired by where we could put it into some frame for people? Like, if you love this, you'll love this.