"Without knowing it, I began writing this story when my family and I took a cruise to the Farallon Islands west of San Francisco. For much of the year these great rocks are pounded by surf, blasted by winds, or lost in smothering fog. But we went on a sunny autumn day. And not only did we circle those strange, moonscape islands, we also saw whales--breaching humpbacks and enormous blues--as well as thousands of seabirds. On that trip we also learned about egg gathering on the islands. When streams of would-be millionaires arrived during the Gold Rush, supplying food to them was a major problem. Farmers would sometimes attach the names of miners to the branches of pear trees, having sold each piece of fruit before it grew! The presence of so many eggs just off the coast naturally brought egg gatherers. At one point a gunfight even erupted, in which five men were wounded and one killed. And there really were egg pirates. That day was this book's birthday."