Like Moose, Piper, Annie, Scout, and the other kids in this book, Natalie is a fictional character. I did borrow some of the behaviors and perhaps a little of the essence of my own sister, Gina Johnson, in building Natalie’s character. Gina was diagnosed with classic autism at the age of five.
If Natalie were a real person alive today, she would probably also be diagnosed somewhere on the autism spectrum. But since autism had not been identified in 1935, I could not use that word in this novel.
Though I do have a personal connection to autism, I did not set out to write a book containing a character with autism. When I got the idea to write about Alcatraz, I signed up to be a docent on the island. During the year I was an Alcatraz volunteer, I found myself thinking a lot about Gina. The island reminded me of her. Alcatraz is a lonely block of concrete plunked down in the middle of the spectacular San Francisco Bay, close enough to see the glittering city lights but set apart forever and always-a prison in paradise. Gina was beautiful and oddly perceptive but separated from the rest of us, locked in her own tormented world. When Gina was eight, she drew a picture of a stick figure in a prisonlike box and said, “This is Gina.”
Though we still know surprisingly little about what causes autism, the treatment options have improved dramatically in the last fifteen years. The possibility of partial or even complete recovery from autism is greater now than it was when my sister was a kid. The chances of a life rich in its own rewards for children on the autism spectrum is much more likely today. For Gina, who died when she was eighteen, autism was a prison without a key. I like to think I’ve given my sister’s spirit a new life in the pages of these books.