At the library

A friend just sent me this pic from a display at the San Anselmo Public Library in Marin County, California. I love our libraries! So grateful to see my novel highlighted. (Mother Mother, top shelf.)

Interview in The Bookends Review

I’m grateful to my MFA buddy and friend, Diane Gottlieb, for placing this interview with me in The Bookends Review. The piece was published on April 13, 2022, but I’m a little behind in everything. An excerpt: After you wrote Mamalita, you switched to fiction and wrote your first novel, Mother Mother. What was behind that decision? After Mamalita was published, I realized there was more to say about family, belonging, identity and marriage. I’d already told our story. The story I wanted to tell—needed to tell—was broader and deeper. The only way to get my arms around it was through fiction. You tell the story through two protagonists: Julie, the white adoptive mother, and Rosalba, the indigenous Ixil Maya mother of Juan, the boy Julie adopts. How did you create the voice of a woman whose life is so different from your own? Imagining other lives is the work of a fiction writer. That said, I did a ton of research. First, from visiting Guatemala every year and knowing my kids’ birth mothers as well as many other women in Guatemala. Second, from witnessing testimonials of survivors of Guatemala’s civil war. Third, I read everything I could get my hands on— Straight up political histories of Guatemala, diaries and letters in translation, guides for midwives and Peace Corps volunteers. I immersed myself in Guatemala and absorbed the information into my body, almost as an actor might. Then I sat down and put it on the page. Thanks for reading the entire interview here. xoxo

One Year!

My novel Mother Mother launched a year ago this month. The characters and scenes began to obsess me almost as soon as my memoir Mamalita was published. In my dreams and awake I heard Rosalba and Juan, Julie and Mark. I saw Rosalba’s village in San Rolando and Julie’s art museum in San Francisco. The only way to break free from their insistent voices was to tell their story. I now wonder why it took me seven years to write the thing because I knew the characters, knew the narrative arc, knew the ending from the beginning. I should have sat down and knocked it out in six months. But as my husband kept reminding me, “It takes as long as it takes.” I console myself by remembering that I continued to learn during those seven years, continued to research Guatemalan history, to deepen my understanding of the complexity of family and adoption, identity and belonging. I said everything I needed to say in this book. I put everything on the page. I’m grateful to everyone who read it, who wrote or chatted with me about their reaction, posted a review, recommended to a friend or discussed in their book group. Thank you, too, to my helpful and skilled teachers, beta readers and editors and to Loyola University’s Apprentice House Press. I’m proud of the awards Mother Mother has received and hope you don’t mind if I list them: Winner 2021 San Diego Book Awards for general fiction, Finalist in the 2021 National Indie Excellence Award for general fiction, Distinguished Favorite in the 2021 Independent Book Awards, Third place Feathered Quill Book Awards in literary fiction. Thank you for sharing this journey with me. PS: Mother Mother: Check it out! It’s a great read! Xoxox

“For a limited time only” (as they say)

Just in case you were thinking of buying my novel, Mother Mother, but haven’t gotten around to it yet: I was checking my listing on Amazon (as one does ) and noticed a huge price drop on the paperback, to $7.93. Now whether this is a good sign or a bad one, I don’t know, but since I myself can’t resist a bargain, I’m passing along the info. Buy one for a friend? Mother’s Day is around the corner. Mother Mother on Amazon.

Christmas 2020

No date stamp needed on this year’s holiday card. Season’s Greetings from us to you! xoxo PS: The kids are standing on a fence behind us. They’re tall, but not that tall. Photo taken at Muir Woods.