During most of the summers she worked on Someday We Will Fly, DeWoskin rented a room in the historic Embankment Building, which once received newly arriving Jewish refugees, and which, if viewed from above, apparently takes the shape of an "S", the first letter in the name Sassoon, the prominent Jewish family who had it constructed.

"Living in the building where Lillia would have been processed as a refugee was meaningful and clarifying. I understood that sometimes mail would come to the Embankment Building, so I had Lillia and her friends visit the building, hoping for word from Europe, from Lillia's mom, who didn't make it to Shanghai with her. The building was full, for her and me, of history and hope," she said.