Eve Christensen Wallinga awoke one night in a hotel room in the New Orleans French Quarter, strange phenomena whirling around her (in the room, not on Bourbon Street). She picked up a pen, which began glowing between her fingers, and put it to paper. Thus, The Voodoo Breast: A Novel of Healing was born, or at least, conceived. The labor was long and difficult—seven years. Readers would be surprised to know which parts of the story are true and which are fiction. Voodoo Breast: A Story of Healing was named to Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2014. Water, especially large bodies of water, grounds Eve, directs her paths, and stirs her imagination. It always has. Growing up in Racine, Wisconsin, which perches on the edge of Lake Michigan, she learned to orient herself, not by the North Star, but by east being “that way” toward the lake. Living in St. Cloud, Minnesota, which perches on the edge of the Mississippi River, east is “that way” toward the river. North is “that way” toward Lake Superior, and New Orleans—the city Eve swoons for, the city of her novel—is south, downriver. Eve and her husband, Gary, spent many years hiking and exploring the north shore of Lake Superior with their daughter and son, now-grown and flown. The year the nest emptied, in 2006, North Shore Press published Eve and Gary’s regional best-seller, Waterfalls of Minnesota’s North Shore: A Guide for Sightseers, Hikers and Romantics. Eve’s main concern was that their directions to waterfalls be complete and detailed, lest someone become lost in the north woods or river canyons under their watch. But she was pleased when Midwest Book Review said, “The prose description of falls and hikes are magnificent enough to do justice to the beautiful scenery.” Finding unique ways of describing scores of plunging, cascading, leaping, rumbling, diving, spraying, dancing, thundering waterfalls, helped hone Eve’s creative and descriptive skills. Prior to writing about waterfalls, though, Eve spent three years helping her friend, Edward Weir, write, transcribe, and edit, One Cool Remove, a memoir for his two young children. At the age of only 37, he’d been diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s Disease. He battled time and his failing body to complete the book. While working with Ed, Eve realized how much she enjoyed the writing process and how important it is to pursue our passions while we still can. This lesson was reinforced the year Waterfalls came out. While she and Gary were enjoying increasing success as collaborative visual artists (they paint with sticks) and she worried that life was going too smoothly, Eve was diagnosed with breast cancer. Due to a series of fortuitous events, her treatment path lead her to New Orleans and its magic. It is here, our story begins . . .