User:Derild4921/When you Reach Me

Concept and development
Rebecca Stead came up with the idea for When You Reach Me when she read an article in The New York Times about a person in Denver who could not remember who he was or why he was there. Many people tried to find ways for him to remember anything at all. Under hypnosis it was found that he had two daughters killed in a car crash and a wife named Penny. However, when Penny was found, they realized she wasn't his wife, only his finance and they had no children. Upon reading this, Stead began to wonder if "this guy knows something that we don’t. Or maybe this guy came from some time or place where this had actually come to pass. Maybe that’s why he’s here. What was the journey? And why did he end up with his brain kind of wiped clean?" This became the "nugget" of her story which she tied into here life on New York’s Upper West Side.

With the basic idea down, Stead began researching the science behind time travel and making sure her ideas would also work out logically. She says that this caused "a complete meltdown". To help her, Stead called her dad who enjoyed mathematics and puzzles. As she talked to her dad about time travel, she "just kept falling into the same hole with the logic, and he really helped me straighten it out".

A Wrinkle in Time
Throughout the story, the main character Miranda is often seen reading A Wrinkle in Time. Stead says that she was also a huge fan of the book and would continuously read and reread the book. She recalls that Madeleine L’Engle was the only author she had ever met in her childhood. However, Stead only meant to have A Wrinkle in Time in there as a small detail describing it as a "talisman" for Miranda though she knew this "would eventually jettison, because you can't just toss A Wrinkle in Time in there casually". The more she wrote, the more she wanted for the book to make a deeper meaning and talked the her editor and others helping her and together they deceided for the book to have a deeper meaning. Rereading the book multiple times, Stead then tried "to see it as different characters in my own story might" which created more and more connections.