I loved reading that, and I could not help but wonder, did you discover anything between the lines when you were doing the research for this novel?

Oh, yes, and that was actually the engine behind of drama, if you will, the way the plot unfolded had a lot to do with the diary that I found was among my mother's collectibles.

And it was something she bought at the flea market in London, because I think she thought it looked good on the shelf, red leather spine, gold leather.

Gold lettering.

And it was all in elegant India ink calligraphy.

It was hard to read.

But it was a soldier's diary from...

Now, was there any indication that the man who wrote the journal on which the book is based, that your mother bought, did he know why World War I started? Did he know what he was fighting for?

I mean, I know it's real.

The Eastern question had to do with the fact that everybody at that time in history was aware that the Turkish Ottoman Empire was in severe decline and didn't have much longer.

So if it did decline further because it was running out of money and also influential leadership and also trying to manage an extended empire that was just probably unmanageable, mostly Arab tribes, and we can say tribes now, we're supposed to say ethnic communities, But the Ottoman Empire is falling apart.

OK, here you have this big southern portion of the Black Sea and this access to what was now going to be Suez and the bottleneck to the Persian Gulf.

If they're not going to be there or they're not going to be influential, who's going to rush into that power vacuum? remember what your teacher told you in school, Russia will covet warm water ports.

It was all about not only the British, but also the Germans, fearing what the Russians would do if they didn't assert their empire's influence.

Now, as it happened in World War I, something that really not as many people saw coming was something called the Russian Revolution in 1917.

money.