![]() ![]() So I became kind of obsessed with how that happens. Their relationship became almost like an additional character I wanted to explore and dissect and understand.Īlso, in the six years that I’d set the story aside, I’d gotten (happily!) married but seen a lot of marriages around me fall apart. I wondered if Andres would be able to compartmentalize, and not let his feelings about his failing marriage affect the decisions he makes as he tries to save Marabela. And I thought that was pretty fascinating, because life never happens in a vacuum, even (or maybe especially) the kinds of things we most fear. When I got to his story, it was like they’d been keeping their troubled marriage secret from me all this time. I started with Cynthia’s POV, then Consuelo, then Ignacio, and then finally, Andres. I’d originally written my thesis as a set of linked short stories, all told from different POVs, about Marabela’s kidnapping. Their relationship took me by surprise from the very first draft. A USA Today review called the book “a page turner.” Natalia Sylvester’s debut novel, Chasing the Sun, tells the story of a kidnapping and its effects on a marriage. This seems like a real accomplishment-to create a story that can rival kidnapping for suspense. Even after Marabela is kidnapped, I found myself wondering not whether she’d survive but what would happen after she returned. Speaking of the backstory, I loved the relationship between Andres and Marabela-it’s so complex. Though none of the characters are based on my family, having their insights (and now I realize, their support) was so necessary because I wanted to restart this story from a place of truth and honesty. This time I approached it with a heavy emphasis on research-not just on Peru and its political situation and the years of terrorism it experienced, but also the main thing I’d been avoiding all along, which was talking to my family about the kidnapping. I had no plans to ever revisit it, but my husband had read parts of it and would constantly insist, based on one scene he loved, that there was something there. I set the book aside for nearly six years. I don’t really buy into the “write what you know” belief, but when I write I do need to find an access point into a story, and for me it can be almost anything, as long as it feels true.) ![]() (Also, I was 21, newly engaged, and trying to write a story about a troubled marriage. Not surprisingly, the story didn’t come together the way I’d hoped. I let all my questions pile up and even when I wrote the first drafts of Chasing the Sun, I wrote it quietly, keeping all my questions between me and the page. It’s something I’d known about and wondered about, but since we rarely spoke about it in much depth, I didn’t ask. I started writing it as part of my undergrad Creative Writing thesis back in 2005/2006, and back then (like I’d been most of my life) I was hesitant to talk to my family about my grandfather’s kidnapping. I think more than anything, it was time that allowed me to tell this story. What finally allowed you to turn that story into a novel? Was it a question of finding the right backstory for the kidnapping? I’m sure that’s a story that you’ve been thinking about for a long time, not just what happened to your grandfather but the larger political situation in Peru at the time. I know the novel is based in part on the kidnapping of your grandfather in Lima in the 1990s. To read an exercise on moving the plot forward in a novel and an excerpt from Chasing the Sun, click here. In this interview, Sylvester discusses restarting a novel after setting it aside for six years, the things that pull a marriage apart, and what happens when you pitch to American editors a novel set in Peru with an all-Peruvian cast of characters. ![]() Her second novel, Everyone Carries Their Own Water, is forthcoming from Little A in 2018. Her debut novel, Chasing the Sun, was named the Best Debut Book of 2014 by Latinidad, and was chosen as a Book of the Month by the National Latino Book Club. Her articles have appeared in Latina Magazine, Writer’s Digest, The Writer, and. As a child, she spent time in south Florida, central Florida, and the Rio Grande Valley in Texas before her family set roots once again in Miami. A former magazine editor, Natalia now works as a freelance writer in Austin, Texas, and is a faculty member of the low-res MFA program at Regis University. Natalia Sylvester was born in Lima, Peru, and came to the U.S. It tells the story of a marriage-in-crisis that is pushed to the brink by a kidnapping. Natalia Sylvester’s debut novel, Chasing the Sun, is set in Lima, Peru, during the terrifying years of the Shining Path.
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