BJK: "Regarding the parts set in the forest with the monkey family, I'd like to ask, if I may, if your mother intends these as fully remembered events? I understand from my reading that in some cases, of course, there's research involved and working backwards — to refer correctly to Brazil nuts let's say, or to a caiman, which specific knowledge a [young girl] naturally wouldn't have."

"But here's the heart of my question: Is your mother saying to us, her readers, that she fully remembers all the key events from, say, her first year in the forest, that are presented? That she and her ghostwriter are not filling in details to make a more exciting and readable narrative?"

VJ: "I wish I could answer this question more, because obviously it would make anyone skeptical to think she would remember that much detail in chronological order. The answer is no. She actually has no sense of chronology in her life, that's something we worked through together by taking a research trip back to Colombia in 2007, interviewing people, visiting places, gathering dates and relying on a bit of imagination to fill the transitions in between. So her floating memories have been stitched together by us with as much backing as we've been able to [find]. We only feel confident that it's fairly accurate with how everything managed to slot in together neatly once we'd got the pieces in some order."

"As for the first year in the forest and the events presented there, all the events did occur, nothing was made up there. All of it happened, but probably not in that order. Although there was some reasoning/logic behind the choice of order. The opening few jungle days were strongest in her memory in terms of order and events. So the first day when she was dumped and her feelings was very strong, but after that, the days became less 'eventful' for her to remember specifics, and her concept of time had really gone astray by then. Life had become more routine, and being a gradual acceptance into the monkey troop, no key event stood out to pinpoint time. It became a mushy blend of basic jungle life and survival."

"So, for that part of the story I originally re-created a potential 'typical day' or two from memories of specific events she DID have. And those have taken a long time to gather, they've leaked out over my whole life very naturally, like when visiting a farmers market and her seeing a Brazil nut pod, or a small banana, or seeing her grandkid hit the other with a long branch, naturally occurring triggers like that would always pull a story out, and I've just always collected them. I re-created a typical day, which was often cross-referenced with any research I could find online, she checked it all over and thought it was all likely, although from interviewing her on this era, it comes across that she really did live there with the mind of an animal, not a human mind so much."

BJK: "From many years of study of and about monkeys and apes, myself, I am struggling to understand some of the observations ranging from nest-making in the monkeys to the very specific incident where the older male monkey persuaded your mother to drink muddy water and thus purge (from food poisoning). Please understand that in order to do this, a male monkey would have a) to grasp in some way that a small child not of his own species was ill, b) to understand something about why that small child might be ill, c) to take the child's perspective and understand that she didn't know how to treat her illness, d) to understand what might cure that illness and finally e) to know how to enable the child to bring about that cure. This is quite a major claim of cognitive complexity for a monkey. In other words, the book contains what are to my knowledge unprecedented accounts vis-a-vis a scientific framework achieved by many primatologists with many hundreds or thousands of hours of observation. How are we to think about this matter, given your mother's age at the time and her vulnerable state?"

VJ: "This is also one of those we discussed heavily. Because with her adult mind she remembers him nudging her, not so much grabbing/grasping, amongst other perceptions of the event. But as it felt at the time, being a very sick girl in pain and fear for her life, she recalls it as a very frightening moment, and acknowledges that to her back then, it felt rougher than it may have been. As for the grandpa monkey knowing of her discomfort. She was already a recognized part of the troop, we believe, and seeing a wriggling-on-the-floor and probably howling child that they had allowed in to their community, I don't see that as too hard to believe that he understood she was ill. I'm sure my cat knows when I'm ill though! The experts we've spoken to say capuchins would be the breed most likely to come down and be curious enough to do such a thing. And observe such a behavior. Mum doesn't think the other capuchins in the group would have done anything other than just prodded her, but she feels there was always some connection to the older monkey."

"Why he knew what to do ... well, mum can't answer that. None of us can. Maybe it was coincidence that he acted like that and that it luckily happened to be the very thing she most needed — to either drink water, or purge. But she vividly remembers eye contact with that monkey. Trust was there."

"It is definitely an out of the ordinary event. But actually, it is those out of the ordinary events that mum remembers more clearly than the rest. I even remember mum once telling me as a young girl how the monkeys would crack into nuts using tools. Then when I was about 10 years old, I saw on the children's news program 'Breaking news! Monkeys are so smart they can break into nuts using tools.' My sister and I laughed, we knew that already! But if we'd told any experts before, based on her memories, they probably would have dismissed it because they'd not found it first. Understandably. But sadly, too. So, the events may have been dramatized by the ghost writer, (mainly in terms of her feelings in each moment, as she didn't have emotional memory so much), but it is as she recalls it."