![]() We'd rented a flat near the Ospedale degli incurabili-the Hospital of the Incurables. We had taken our children and parents to wintry Venice the year before, at the end of my last book tour, and that trip gave me the idea for the story that would become The Orphan's Song. "We'll FaceTime when we land," my husband said, reading my expression and pouring more champagne into my glass. ![]() I looked out the window and wondered: Did writing a book about abandoned children require me to temporarily abandon my own? Was I taking the research a little too far? It was my husband's and my first trip without our children, and as the plane's wheels lifted off the runaway, we clinked champagne glasses like escaping criminals. The night before, my parents had flown in from Dallas, offering to look after our 3-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter. But for the first time in ages I had an airplane seat all to myself-no bouncing toddler boy in my arms, no coloring book- and peanut-pleading little girl upon my knee. I had my passport, my dog-eared copy of John Julius Norwich's A History of Venice opened on my tray table, Vivaldi soaring through my earbuds and an itinerary of meetings with historians ahead of me. ![]() I was hoping the rest of the story would find me over the next ten days.Īs the plane's door slammed, I felt that something was missing. I knew the story would unfold in the city's hedonistic 18th century, and that it would orbit the unique Venetian institution called the ospedale-a combination hospital, orphanage and music conservatory. Two years ago, on a dusky April evening, my husband and I boarded a flight from L.A.
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