"It grew out of a novel about displaced persons and going into a culture you don't understand," says Hall, whose pseudonym is a Latin translation of her real name. Hall is an adjunct professor at DePaul, where she has been teaching in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric and Discourse since 2005. At the time, she was researching for "HeartStone," the second book in her Dolvia Saga fantasy series. "In it, people are pushed off their land and received onto the savanna."