 118 people died in the crashes, and Blume's father, who was a dentist, helped to identify the unrecognizable remains.Blume says she "buried" these memories until she began writing her 2015 novel "In the Unlikely Event", the plot of which revolves around the crashes.A lifelong avid reader, Blume first began writing when her children were attending preschool, and she was living in the New Jersey communities of Plainfield and Scotch Plains.