How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?Visit Danielle Binks's website.
My original title was Operation Safe Haven which in 1999 was the official name given to the Australian Government's plan of flying in refugees of the Kosovo War, and housing them at eight different 'safe haven' locations around the country. In America, it was called Operation Provide Refuge. The second-half of my book very much focuses on the Kosovo War, and a young girl whose world is expanded and turned upside down when she befriends a pregnant refugee woman who is part of 'Operation Safe Haven' and comes to her small Australian town ... but my publisher correctly pointed out that the book is also about this young girl - Winifred 'Fred' - and the changing landscape of her family (her mother who died when she was young, the new partner her father now has - and the young son she brings into the equation and their family home), at the same time that she learns exactly how often the map of the world changes, and not even the ground beneath our feet is exactly rock-solid. It was my publisher who said 'Operation Safe Haven' makes it sound like a middle-grade mystery, but The Year the Maps Changed hints at the turmoil and bigger conflicts - both internal and external - within, and I am forever grateful for her poetic mind...[read on]
Q&A with Danielle Binks.
--Marshal Zeringue
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