English author Christopher Linforth was doing background research and working on his new novel Notes from a Foreign Land which is set in late 1990's Finland. The novel centers on a pop psychology writer from San Diego who has recently lost her father. Her research focuses on the claim about Finns being the happiest people in the world and she wonders – perhaps subconsciously – if she experiences the real life version of this factoid that it will help her get over her father's death. She travels to Finland and from there her life changes.