Part 19 (2/2)
For the final phase of this journey, I wish to thank my agent, Julie Castiglia, who found the perfect home for my ma.n.u.script. Special thanks to Rene Alegria and the dream team at Rayo, and especially my editor, Melinda Moore. Seeing all of you transform my ma.n.u.script into this beautiful book has been like watching a couturier dress a bride. I am amazed and grateful.
To friends and family members who encouraged me to write and for those who offered editorial and publis.h.i.+ng advice, thank you.
About the AuthorSANDRA RODRIGUEZ BARRON was born in Puerto Rico and grew up in El Salvador and Connecticut. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Florida International University, and now lives in Connecticut with her husband and young son. This is her first novel. was born in Puerto Rico and grew up in El Salvador and Connecticut. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Florida International University, and now lives in Connecticut with her husband and young son. This is her first novel.Visitfor exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
bonus PAGES PAGES READING GROUP GUIDE.
Questions for Discussion 3 A Conversation with Sandra Rodriguez Barron 5
READING GROUP GUIDE.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION.
1. Seash.e.l.ls are ever present in this novel. How are these objects a controlling metaphor in the story? Are there any similarities between the nature of seash.e.l.ls and the nature of any of the characters?
2. Monica is said to have an unusual talent for ma.s.sage that is based on a razor-sharp tactile intuition. How does this characteristic relate to, lead to, and perhaps foreshadow the unusual talent that she discovers in the end?
3. Will Lucero and his mother-in-law both love and care for Yvette, yet are constantly at odds about the decisions relating to her care. Were your sympathies weighted with one character more than the other?
4. Will Lucero is torn between his loyalty to his wife and the hopelessness of her medical condition. At what point do you think the spouse of a mentally incapacitated person can move on emotionally to love another person?
5. The object of Alma's quest, the Conus furiosus Conus furiosus, is never found in the span of the story. Do you think the pursuit of something that could potentially do so much good is worth a lifetime of sacrifice, even if it is never found?
6. Monica falls in love with Will first because of his physical appeal, then his humanity, then the intimacy of their situation as they struggle together in El Salvador.
Did you feel conflicting loyalties toward Monica and Yvette?
7. Do you think that the subconscious can influence the body during a traumatic event or illness? Did the cone venom treatment ultimately free Yvette or did it kill her?
8. Monica was herself a victim of adultery. When she reports her mother's errant behavior to her father, she unwittingly sets off a chain of events that cause a tragedy. Was Bruce Winters wise in hiding that fact from Monica all these years?
9. The sea is as much a character in this novel as are the people. Have you ever lived in a place where nature affects the routines, work, emotional, or spiritual nature of the humans who live nearby? How does Monica's description of her life in Connecticut set up the contrast to the mystical aura of Negrarena?
10. Throughout the novel there is a tension between opposites: Catholicism versus the spiritual nature of the sea, traditional medicine versus experimentation, wealth versus poverty, marriage versus adultery, anger versus forgiveness. Do you think that Monica has managed to strike a balance between these forces by the end of the story?
11. Monica is ultimately rewarded with three gifts that she did not initially seek: love, money, and a rare spiritual/intellectual inheritance. Do you think that Monica is better equipped than her mother to handle these gifts?
12. Do you think that Monica and Will might eventually get together-or will Monica's newfound gifts set her on a new, solo path? Is Will a good match for her, given who she becomes at the end of the story?
13. Do you think that Monica will follow in her mother's footsteps in any way?
A CONVERSATION WITH SANDRA RODRIGUEZ BARRON.
As a writer, what interests you in a novel?
A novel allows you to get to know characters in the most intimate way, to hear their private thoughts, to witness their joys, fears, shames. Unless you're eavesdropping, reading a novel is the only time you get to know what other people talk about behind closed doors. It provides a way to view another mind and, therefore, another world.
Is there a part of you in Monica Winters?
I would have a lot of biographical facts in common with Monica, and we have a similar temperament. If she were real we would be great friends, but the events of her adult life are very unlike mine, as is our family life.
Who or what does Alma Borrero represent?
Alma Borrero is highly flawed, especially as a wife and a mother, but I admire her for having the guts to reject cultural expectations that she finds to be personally inappropriate. I haven't always been gutsy in this way, especially when I was younger. I find that Latin American culture can be especially inflexible in its expectations about what a woman should do with her time, how she should look, and how she should behave. There is the emphasis on physical beauty and a general lack of appreciation of depth or intellect in young women. Alma isn't remotely interested in beauty, wealth, society, or even being a wife and mother-all the standard feminine values. Alma is constantly going against the grain of what's expected of her, and that can be exhausting if you're doing it all your life. The tragedy of her family life is the consequence of a single moment of weakness in which she compromised with her parents and married a man she didn't love. Her otherwise stubborn nature represents a kind of feminine ideal to me, and I admire that unflinching focus on her life's pa.s.sion. I find her fascinating.
What kind of research did you have to do to write Heiress of Water? Heiress of Water?
I had to research a lot of the details of El Salvador's civil war. Since I was Monica's age at the time, my perspective on those events was that of a child, and so I had to go back to books and old newspapers to process it with an adult mind. Marine science and head trauma were subjects that I had to research extensively, and in addition to consulting books and academic and professional journals, I did some field research by consulting with experts in both subjects.
There was this one perfect, sunny day when I got in my car and drove out to Sanibel Island to visit a sh.e.l.l museum, to speak with mollusk scholars, and view their vaults full of cones from around the world. In the quaint downtown area, I found sh.e.l.l boutiques that catered to serious collectors, where rare seash.e.l.ls were displayed (and priced) like jewels. After I'd gathered more information on sh.e.l.ls than I could ever use in twenty novels, I drove around the island and combed the beach for its famously abundant seash.e.l.ls, gathering a few souvenirs to remind me of this lovely day. I was utterly smitten with Sanibel's natural beauty. I imagined that Alma and Monica would one day meet here for a vacation. They'd be in heaven.
What compelled you to write so lovingly about seash.e.l.ls and the sea?
One of the fondest memories I have of growing up in El Salvador is of combing remote, virginal black sand beaches for seash.e.l.ls. Every once in a while, I'd find something that looked like it was designed by Dr. Seuss, whimsical and inviting to the imagination. Back then, it never occurred to me to buy a book that cla.s.sified them, I was just happy to clean them and take them home and enjoy their strange beauty. It wasn't until I started writing about those recollections that I saw the opportunity to give those memories structure by adding a scientific perspective. As I began to research mollusks and seash.e.l.ls in general, I discovered that there is an entire subculture of people who are obsessed with seash.e.l.ls, collectors who attend conferences and pay thousands of dollars for the rarest ones. Although I am not a collector myself, I could empathize with this pa.s.sion, so I let the research guide my imagination. Later, when I stumbled upon the real-life research that is being done on the medicinal potential of cone venom, I was further captivated.
As for the sea, I have lived near a sh.o.r.e all my life: in El Salvador, in Connecticut, and I lived in Miami for ten years. I lived in one of those high-rise apartments with a floor-to-ceiling view of Biscayne Bay, and I always enjoyed watching sailboats as they seemed almost to parade across my living room. I took sailing lessons out of a marina in Coconut Grove. In Connecticut, I also went boating and sailing with relatives and friends, and I have always derived a very calm, spiritual feeling from being near water. But there is something about El Salvador's remote beaches that is intensely spiritual and artistically inspiring to me-maybe it's the nature, the solitude, the irony of violence that happened in the land beyond. I have no doubt that the psychology of color plays a role-a crowded beach of powder-white sand is festive, but a deserted beach of black, volcanic sand calls to mind richer and darker moods. Since my parents live in El Salvador, I am still able to maintain a connection with those places that so captivated me as a child. Negrarena is a fictional place, loosely based on a place called Playa El Cuco on the eastern sh.o.r.e.
Why did you choose to write about someone who is in a persistent vegetative state?
The subject of unconsciousness surged up during the process of mining my own life for material. When I was eleven, my brother contracted a virus that left him in a coma for two weeks. I have never been in a coma, thank heaven, but I have fainted at least a half dozen times, and each time, I experience this sensory rush, a loud ringing in my ears and flas.h.i.+ng lights in my vision, it's very scary, and I always think that I'm dying. A few years ago, I compiled a huge amount of research on the subject out of pure curiosity. From fainting and my brother's coma, my interest began to include even more serious conditions. Eventually, I realized that there are many elements in this area that still remain a mystery to science, and anything we don't know can be claimed by imagination. The scenes inside Yvette's head were some of the wildest writing I've ever done. I related it to my own scary fainting experiences, where being ”kicked out” of consciousness is much like being incarcerated, a claustrophobic cell from which I would desperately want to escape.
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