On the inspiration behind The Impossible Knife of Memory:

Laurie Halse Anderson: With most books, when you're writing it, of course you think that the idea just hits you. When you have some hindsight you can see exactly where it came from. One thread was growing up with a World War II veteran father who had PTSD from his experience. My dad lived to be 86, and those memories were seared so deeply, they caused him pain for all of those years, and he became an alcoholic, and there were a lot of family struggles, like many families of veterans have struggles.

The second piece was when my nephew left the Army after several tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Watching him try to reintegrate into civilian society really helped me understand my dad from a completely different perspective, and that got me thinking about the kids whose fathers and mothers were the new veterans from this war, and what kind of scars would they have that their kids couldn't see, that would make family life a challenge? The third part for me goes down to a little girl in Dallas, Texas. A couple years ago, I was speaking at her school, and she said to me, "Miss, are you ever going to write about a love story? Wouldn't it be nice to write something that wouldn't make you cry all the time?" That's what I tried to do with this one — it was a little bit of a different spin for me.