When Terry's daughter was ten years old, he began creating a one-page newsletter called "The Lunchtime News" that he put in her lunch once a week. It contained poems, graphics, articles about the exploits of a student scientist whose name was suspiciously similar to his daughter's, and art contests that were always won by--guess who. About a year later, after reading a book about a boy's wilderness adventure, he wondered why there were so few books about girls having such adventures. So he began writing a story about a young woman doctor on an emergency mission who crash-landed a light plane in the winter wilderness of northwestern Ontario and was forced to rescue herself. The story took up about twelve issues of The Lunchtime News. When it was finished, he realized he had the beginnings of a novel. After considerable research and countless rewrites, The Winter Road emerged.