Sunlight and Shadow Sue Boggio Mare Pearl Paperback $12.95 Read more...

INTRODUCTION

Life has never been better for Abby and Roberto Silva. Abby's restaurant is one of the most popular in San Diego. Their relationship is stronger than ever. But after a robbery at the restaurant leaves them deeply shaken—and they receive word of Bobby's father's death—everything changes. They move to Bobby's hometown, Esperanza, New Mexico, convinced that life will be simpler in this rural farming town whose very name means "hope." But there's a secret in Bobby's past, and on the first night in their new home, he goes out to deal with it. He never returns. Abby begins to discover just how many secrets a heart—and a town—can hold...

ABOUT SUE BOGGIO AND MARE PEARL

Sue Boggio and Mare Pearl work at the University of New Mexico, Sue as a registered nurse and Mare as a mental health technician. As active members of the Southwest Writers Workshop, they have won numerous writing awards. With the release of this book, they are celebrating their fortieth year of friendship.

AN INTERVIEW WITH SUE BOGGIO AND MARE PEARL

How do you collaborate on fiction?

We've been writing together in one form or another since we were children. It is an extension of our friendship and speaks to how we experience life. Human beings have always fascinated us! We've always observed and tried to make sense of why people behave the way they do, what experiences shape who they are. This drew us to our careers in milieu therapy at the New Mexico Children and Adolescent Psychiatric Center.

When we begin a novel, we have a strong shared vision of the themes we want to tackle. Characters start to emerge who will best express these central themes. Then the process is much like our childhood game of "what if?" What if this happened? What would our character do then? Plot comes from characterization and theme.

When we feel we have enough information (character profiles and notes) from this brainstorming phase, we generally each write a point-of-view character. In this case, Mare wrote Rachel and Sue wrote Abby. We give each other writing assignments for the week and then we go to our respective homes and get busy! We come back together at least once a week to read to each other, give feedback, and start the process over for the next week. One of the most valuable things about our partnership is the magic that happens when we read to each other and really listen to what we are writing. There is definitely a magical synergy to our process, which is rooted in mutual respect and permission for each of us to bring our different strengths to the table.

This [interview] is intended to enrich the individual reading experience, as well as encourage us to explore these topics together—because books, and life, are meant for sharing.

What was the impetus for this novel?

After living in New Mexico for decades, it was a natural extension of our love for the people and the place. The multicultural experience here adds a richness to the already compelling landscape. We began to observe the abstract boundaries people create between races and cultures and the rewards and consequences of crossing those boundaries. Certainly everyone has had the experience of feeling like the outsider. Mare experienced this at times being a Jew in Iowa. As non-Hispanics in New Mexico, there was an initial period of adaptation, of becoming accepted. We think here, though, because there have been so many centuries to practice, people generally are able to get past the differences and start to relate person-to-person.

Once we started asking questions about positive and potentially negative consequences of crossing boundaries for love, Abby's story and dilemma came to us quickly. The fictional world of Esperanza and its people grew out of our themes and the village would be adjacent to Mare's rural acreage if it existed in the physical world.

Why did goats play such a significant part in the story?

Mare has three pet goats currently and has had goats for years. We love them! They are so intelligent, playful and actually give a lot back. When we first meet Rachel, she is an angry and conflicted woman. Giving her goats helps to humanize her and certainly they provide her with the most positive relationships in the beginning. Goats are a therapeutic force in her journey. Her father ultimately confronts her about her use of animals as surrogate children and a means to avoid growing up. As Rachel begins to approach her goat dairy more as a businesswoman cognizant of her responsibility to give something back to the family, her relationships with people start to improve. She still loves her goats, but she becomes better able to translate her love for animals into her interactions with people.

Santiago is a compelling character. Where did he come from?

Our years of working with hundreds and hundreds of young people in crisis have rewarded us with a vast body of wonderful experiences. Santiago is like so many of these children. He is an innocent caught in the negative snare of his father's pathology. Santiago is further burdened with the secret he carries. These children often carry the family secrets, to their own detriment. Santiago carries the guilt of his father's actions and this motivated him to reach out to Abby despite the boundary his father had established and the boundary inherent in the situation. His reward is the nurturance he receives from Abby and the Vigils. We wanted to illustrate how these wounded children flourish with healthy attention from caring adults. We think young characters are completely valid in adult literature and in fact provide so much that adult characters cannot. All of our work has multigenerational characters because we think it is more interesting and reflective of real life.

As non-Hispanic people, how did you go about writing Hispanic characters?

Certainly from a position of humility. We relied heavily on our variety of Hispanic friends and role models. We read extensively, especially wonderful Hispanic writers like Denise Chavez and Rudolfo Anaya to educate ourselves more specifically about the Hispanic culture in New Mexico. Then we stressed the universality of the themes and experiences of the characters. Whether you are a woman trying to write a male character or vice versa, or any other leap we writers make in the hearts and minds of characters different from us, you go for the common experience. We are human beings first.

Examining the definition of family is one of your central themes in Sunlight and Shadow. What conclusions have you come to?

From our work at the children's psychiatric center, we learned that our spiritual families are sometimes not the families you can diagram on a family tree. We were both very lucky to grow up in very strong and loving families. If that is not the case, we believe it is a healthy aspect of humans that we seek to create family bonds outside of bloodline definitions. Abby was emotionally orphaned from her parents. Her relationship with Bobby started her healing process and then the torch is passed to the loving people of Esperanza. Santiago has a parallel experience. Bobby talked about how much he depended on his relationships with the Vigils and the larger community of Esperanza after his mother's death. Rachel suffers from her internal conflicts and the confusion of being biracial (fueled by Maria) to the point where even though love is all around her, she has trouble experiencing it. In this story, most of the characters who chose mates outside of their familial expectations paid a price for it; a sacrifice for their love.

Especially in this time of racial and religious strife around the world, which threatens our peace and our very existence on the planet, we believe we humans must figure out a way past these lines we draw that separate us into "us and them." To survive, we must make the evolutionary leap to see everyone as part of the human family and begin to solve our problems from that perspective. We can preserve our unique cultural traditions and identity within the larger whole, just as a healthy family allows for the individuation of its members.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. Abby, Bobby, CeCe, and Miguel all chose to marry outside their families' expectations. Discuss the rewards and sacrifices of these choices. How much should our family influence these important choices and when is it appropriate to go against them?
    
2. Santiago has a significant role in the story. What does he provide? How did his role affect the overall story and the main characters? What do you think he will be like as a teenager? What kind of future do you think he has?
    
3. Bobby is known to the reader briefly but powerfully. How do his personality traits contribute to his fate?
    
4. Abby goes through various reactions and stages of grief throughout the story. Discuss how her faith and trust in Bobby are tested and how she responds. How would you have handled such a prolonged and difficult dilemma?
    
5. Discuss the different phases of Abby's and Rachel's relationship. What do they learn from each other? What is the impact of Rachel's transformation on Abby and the other people in Rachel's life?
    
6. It could be argued that fantasy always plays a role in romantic love. At the beginning of the book, Rachel is an extreme example of fantasy superseding reality in her love for Bobby. How and why does this change?
    
7. How do you feel about the choice Abby faces at the book's conclusion? Would you have chosen differently?
    
8. The people of Esperanza espouse the value of La Familia. Who best exemplifies this value and who falls short? What is your definition of family?