On the strength of that insert I decided to write about her, not realizing that there was such a dearth of information about this African leader. Our search for Nzingha took us to Portugal where we located a book in Portuguese about her. We later found the English translation at the University of Virginia Library and borrowed it through Washington University's inter-library loan system. That's what we meant by our research taking many surprising twists and turns. You've written two Dear America diaries already, but Nzingha is unique in that she actually lived.
Details make the difference between writing about a fictional person and a real person.
Filling in the details of Nzingha's life was very challenging because of time, distance, and ignorance. Let me explain. Africa is very large and very old. And we know so little about the people who lived there. When African life was interrupted by the slave trade, a great deal of information was lost.