One of my favorite parts of writing is falling down research rabbit holes. Sometimes I’m looking for a small detail and end up discovering something that changes a character completely.
That’s what happened when I was creating the ghost spirit in Gray’s Violet. I knew she would be African American and that she would have worked in the medical field. While researching, I learned about the African American nurses who served during World War II, and the more I read, the more invested I became in their stories.
These women were trained nurses who wanted to serve their country, yet many were turned away because of the color of their skin. Even those who were accepted faced quotas and segregation. Learning that some African American nurses were assigned to care for German prisoners of war while still being denied equal opportunities themselves made me angry.
As a Navy veteran, their stories hit me on a personal level. I’ve experienced discrimination during my own military service. It wasn’t the same as what these women endured, but I understood the frustration of having to constantly prove yourself. The more I read, the more I admired their strength and determination. Their stories stopped being a piece of history and became personal.
Those nurses became the inspiration for my ghost character. While she is fictional, she carries a little of their resilience, courage, and spirit. In many ways, writing her became my way of honoring women whose contributions deserve to be remembered.
