Ava Dellaira is the author of the new young adult novel In Search of Us. She also has written the young adult novel Love Letters to the Dead. She lives in Los Angeles.
Q: How did you come up with
the idea for In Search of Us, and for your characters Angie and Marilyn?
A: The initial idea to write a
story that goes back and forth between a mom and a daughter when they are each
17 popped into my head while I was sitting in LA traffic (which seems to be
serving me well as an author so far!).
I think in part the concept came
out of my connection to my own mom, and my longing to know things about her
that I would never be able to ask (she had died several years before), as well
an interest in exploring the ways in which echoes of the past reach into the
present.
A few weeks later, I happened
to stumble on a BBC article on someone’s Twitter feed called “Do the Dead
Outnumber the Living,” about population growth and the number of people living on
earth now, versus the number of people who have ever lived.
Just after the reading the
article, while I was taking a walk on the beach, I began to hear Angie’s voice.
She thinks of herself as only one of more than seven billion, she told me, and
feels as small as a drop in the ocean.
I learned that she and I both
believe in ghosts. And that she and I had some of the same questions: What
could possibly be my place in such a vast world? I could see then that Angie’s
journey to learn that she matters would be connected to her discovery of the
truth about where she comes from.
Marilyn’s character unfolded
more slowly. As I began to work on the book and to travel back in time to
discover Angie’s roots, I slowly got to know Marilyn and to hear her voice,
too.
Q: The book focuses in part
on issues surrounding race, and you're donating some of your proceeds to the
NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. What impact do you hope the story has
on readers?
A: When I began working on In
Search Of Us, I was interested in exploring how the past influences the
present, in these often invisible ways. Over the course of writing, the concept
expanded beyond the realm of personal and family history, and also became about
our collective history.
One of the most important
themes of the book that I hope will resonate with readers has to do with the
importance of facing our pasts in order to create the present and future that
we want, which I think this has everything to do with race and racism in
America.
At the time that I was writing
the book, so many tragedies around racial injustice were coming to light, and
in part the story was my response to that. I had just moved in with my now-husband,
who is black, and we were beginning to build a family together, getting engaged
and married and starting to plan for the child we hoped to have.
So on a personal level, my
desire to address issues surrounding race also came out of my love for him and
for his family, and my need to think about the responsibilities (and possible
failures), of a white mother to a biracial child.
Though it can often be easier
to avoid talking about or confronting these difficult topics, (like Marilyn does
for a time in the book), I believe it’s essential to any real healing or
transformation that we take the risks of looking honestly at our blind spots,
having the hard conversations, and facing the painful realities in our history.
Q: You switch back and forth
between sections told from Marilyn's perspective and sections told from Angie's
perspective. Did you write the book in the order it appears, or did you focus
more on one character and then turn to the other?
A: I wrote the two sections
separately – when I would get stuck on Marilyn’s story, I’d work on Angie’s for
a while and vise-versa, so while they weren’t written in order, they were
written in tandem, and I think this helped to create a sense of connection
between them.
Originally I had imagined
alternating chapters, but I could quickly sense that wouldn’t allow the reader
to sink deeply enough into either narrative, so I created section breaks and
tried splicing them together. Luckily it worked, as I began this process only a
few weeks before I had to turn in the first draft of the manuscript to my
editor!
Q: Did you know how the novel
would end before you started writing, or did you make many changes along the
way?
A: I had the idea that the novel
would end the way it does soon after I began writing, but by the time I
actually reached the end of the book I was gripped with fear and sadness for
the characters that I’d come to care deeply about.
I tried a few other endings
that were clearly not right for the book, before I went back to the ending that
I’d intended and saw that it was the only choice that was true to the story.
Q: What are you working on
now?
A: My first baby is due in
less than two weeks, so right now I’m mostly working on her nursery! I am also
thinking about developing In Search Of Us for television, and I have a new book
I’m working on, but it’s still in the early stages.
Q: Anything else we should
know?
A: I really appreciate the
interview! Thank you so much to your readers for taking the time to check it
out!
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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