Mumbai, Oct 13 : Hollywood star Reese Witherspoon shared that her new novel is a "love letter" to her parents because it was inspired by their careers as army medics.

The Hollywood actress has branched out into writing by penning a new thriller called Gone Before Goodbye with author Harlan Coben which follows an army surgeon who "falls into ...a crazy world of private wealth and private surgery.'

Speaking during her Shine Away summit in Los Angeles, Witherspoon said: "I always think about Jason Bourne or James Bond, and the girls in those books or those movies are always using their sexuality to get ahead.

"And I thought, what if we could do a book in a thriller world where this woman, it's not about her sexuality or being hot, it's literally about this very unique skill she has'?

"She's a reconstructive surgeon, she's been in the military for a long time. She's worked with Doctors Without Borders and she falls into kind of a crazy world of private wealth and private surgery."

Witherspoon added her inspiration came from her parents, reports femalefirst.co.uk.

She added: "The first five years of my life I lived on a military base in Germany and everybody who filtered in and out of our house was another doctor, and all they would talk about was medical jargon.

"So I was really, really little, sitting at the dinner table listening to my dad and his friends and my mom and her friends talk about really gnarly surgeries.'

'For years and years, I wanted to be a surgeon ... (After watching mom work as a nurse for years) I thought, why am I the famous one? This woman literally saved people's lives. So I hope, if you guys have people in the medical profession in your life, it'll give you a little moment to just honor them. This is really a love letter to my mom and dad."

Witherspoon wrote the book with Coben, who helped bring her ideas to life.

Talking about the collaboration, she said: "My entire career, my creative career, I kind of just stepped into other people's visions ... I thought, why don't I be part of making the whole world? I know what I'm doing. I know how to structure things. '

'I know how to get from the beginning to the middle to the end. And so it was a big leap for me to jump in and go, OK, I can't just bow out and my part's done."

/IANS