Barbara's Comments "There's nothing that bothers me more than a novelist who writes the same book over and over again. I couldn't do that. I'd be totally bored. I need to do different things. Each book has to present a new challenge for me. The challenge in Family Tree was to put myself in a situation that was foreign to me and to try to understand what my characters were feeling. I have never personally experienced the inner tumult that Hugh and Dana do in Family Tree. I really did have to push my mind, heart, and imagination to the limit of discovery each day when I sat down to write. In that sense, there were times when I felt as raw as Hugh and Dana did. Like Dana's for her, my yarn store was an antidote. Oh, it's not really mine, simply the one where I'm part of a weekly group, but those nights are sacrosanct. I find knitting to be therapeutic. One of the few memories I have of my mother was of holding a hank of yarn between my hands while she wound it into a ball. She died when I was eight, and I learned to knit soon after that. Perhaps I feel a connection to her when I knit, perhaps I simply feel the age-old comfort of the rhythm of the stitch. But I do identify with Dana in this. As prone to change as is the rest of her life, this part of her heritage is reassuringly, pleasurably secure. "                        *             *             *             *             * For information on the Family Tree connection to Berroco yarn and the Berroco Family Tree Knitting Collection, click here