afford. Marty lets Judd know he knows, and attempts to blackmail him out of Shiloh. Judd and Marty eventually negotiate a deal in which Marty will earn Shiloh for 40 dollars, paid with 20 hours of working for Judd. At the end of the first week, Judd says that he will not keep his end of the deal because the evidence of the dead doe has with the passage of time disappeared. Second, the contract that Marty had him sign is worthless in the state of West Virginia without the signature of a witness. Despite Judd's pointed disapproval of his work, Marty continues to work for him. They begin discussing dogs and Judd's father who began physically abusing Judd when he was four years old. In the end, Judd warms to Marty and lets him keep Shiloh. Autobiographical elements In a 1992 interview about Shiloh, Naylor said: "Like a patchwork quilt, a novel is made up of things that have happened to me and things I have heard or read about, all mixed up with imaginings." Naylor's characters are frequently based on herself and her two sons. She penned the novel following an excursion with her husband, Rex, to visit their friends, Frank and Trudy Madden, in West Virginia. Naylor and Rex were strolling along a river when they discovered a dog in the grass following them. Dejected and frightened, the dog was "the saddest, most mistreated-looking beagle I'd ever seen", Naylor later said. Because the dog frequently shuddered and slunk forward on her belly, Naylor suspected she had been abused. On a whim, Naylor whistled and the dog rushed forward, lapping Naylor's face. Tailing them until they reached the Maddens' house, the beagle remained under a tree, her paws cushioning her head during the drizzly afternoon. Naylor cried during her and her husband's trip home that night. Rex asked her if she would have a "nervous breakdown" or if she would "do something about it". That "something" referred to writing a book, which she did. She believed that someone had abused the dog and was confronted by a series of questions: The Maddens resided near Shiloh, West Virginia, where Naylor found the abused dog in 1989, so she decided to name the book's dog Shiloh. Because the Maddens' post office address is in Friendly, West Virginia, Naylor chose the town as her book's setting. Trudy and Frank Madden adopted