When the Forest Dreams follows a Polish American young woman who believes she may soon inherit her mother’s illness, as she decides to live her life to the fullest while she is able. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

My love of modern retellings was the driving force behind writing my second novel. When the Forest Dreams is a contemporary reimagining of The Blue Castle, by L. M. Montgomery. The story stayed with me because of its powerful exploration of fear, freedom, and self-discovery. One of the central plot devices in the original is a life-altering medical diagnosis, and I was drawn to the emotional urgency that creates, the way the possibility of limited time forces a person to confront what they truly want from life. In the original novel, the diagnosis is angina pectoris. For my adaptation, I chose an illness that is more familiar to contemporary readers and one that can be difficult to diagnose, making the possibility of a misdiagnosis feel credible. For both Valancy and Emma, that mistaken diagnosis becomes the catalyst for transformation. Faced with what they believe may be their future, they begin to reclaim agency over their lives and choices. At its core, their journey is about recognizing that fear often keeps us confined long before circumstance does.

Emma moves from obedience into appetite and self-expression. Was her transformation something you planned from the start, or did it evolve as you wrote her?

This transformation is key to both the original and my retelling and has been part of the story from the beginning. The story is about confronting fear and recognizing how often fear holds us back without us even realizing it. As Alice Walker famously observed, “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” Once Emma breaks free of the things holding her back, she grows and matures, gaining an important understanding that it wasn’t the church or her parents who were keeping her down; she was the one holding herself back. Once she overcame that, things became clearer, and she found happiness.

Birdwatching and Central Park play a vivid role in the story. How did nature become such a grounding force for Emma’s inner life?

Nature is a grounding force for Emma because, in many ways, it is the one place in her life where she feels fully present and free. Much of Emma’s world feels muted and constrained, and I wanted birdwatching to be the one thing that belonged entirely to her—a source of wonder and escape, even within the limitations of her circumstances. I wanted to emphasize the restorative nature of the outdoors for mental and emotional well-being. For Emma, birdwatching becomes both a refuge and a way of understanding herself. Her connection deepens when she travels to the old-growth forests of Arkansas in search of the Ivory-billed woodpecker. In that wilderness, nature shifts from being a place of comfort to a catalyst for self-discovery and transformation.

What do you hope readers take away about duty, identity, and the possibility of reclaiming a life that feels predetermined?

Duty and identity often shape us long before we have the chance to question them, and I hope readers take away that a life that feels predetermined is never truly fixed. At its heart, this story is about courage, transformation, and the quiet reclamation of self—the idea that it is never too late to challenge expectations, redefine who you are, and choose a different path. Fear of change is often the greatest barrier between us and the lives we want, and I hope readers come away believing that growth and reinvention are always possible, no matter where they begin.
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