📚 A Bookish Chat with 'Defiance and Redemption' Author Maria J. Andrade @andradeauthor #AuthorInterview #BlogTour #Interview

Maria J. Andrade was born in Ecuador, South America, and raised in New York and California. She has a bachelor of arts degree in English literature and a master’s degree in Counseling Psychology. As a licensed therapist and writer, Maria has been diving into other people’s minds and her own, through dreams, poetry, and books for over three decades. She traveled with the Four Winds Society where she studied and was initiated into Andean shamanism in 1990.

Before Maria retired as a therapist, she specialized in women’s issues and founded the Wise Women’s Circle a ritualistic and transpersonal study group that continues today. The women support each other through life’s challenges and in the growth of mind, body, and spirit.

Maria Andrade’s books for children and adults is found in a variety of genres. This is an unforgettable first novel that reflects her imagination and creative storytelling.

Defiance and Redemption is her latest release.

Visit her website at www.booksasfriends.com or connect with her on Facebook, Twitter and Goodreads.

 

TWL: Welcome to The Writer's Life!  How did you come up with the idea to write your book?

Maria Andrade: Many of us have been influenced by certain people we have known, especially people in our family. I was inspired by the bond between three women in my family, my mother, her sister, and their friend. Their bond lasted over eighty years. These women lived into their late nineties and died a few years apart. Their sisterhood helped them through some dramatic, scandalous, and riotous times. What women went through to survive at that time in history, is as pertinent today, as it was a century ago.

My book though a fiction novel, is based on true events which happened in the first third of the main character’s life when she was a young woman in Ecuador, South America. Like many women of the early 20^th Century the protagonist, Eva, makes choices in opposition to her society, culture, and family, to determine her life. She pays a price for her defiance but with the support of her sisterhood, she finds the courage to shape a more redeeming future and thus, the title, Defiance and Redemption, A Lifetime of Unbroken Bonds. I translated this story into Spanish for a larger readership. Desafío y redención Una vida de vínculos intactos. That book will soon be available to the public.

TWL: Can you give us a short excerpt?

Maria: Ernest Hemingway once said good stories contain a death. Well, this story begins with a death. I will set up the scene for you. It is the first chapter entitled, WAIT FOR ME: Eduardo Velasquez, national athlete and the love of the protagonist, Eva Alisio, is dying of stomach cancer in Ecuador, South America. Twenty years have passed since Eva left him, but he has never forgotten her. His present wife Dolores and their children as well as illuminate children Eduardo had with other women, which Dolores helped raise, are also in his hospital room. Alongside his bed is his eldest daughter Amalia, the first of two daughters he had with Eva. Amalia has come from America to be with him because all her life she has carried her mother’s love for him. As he begins to die, he thinks Amalia is Eva and calls Eva’s name believing she has returned to him. Dolores hears him and storms out of the room with her children. Amalia tries to grant her dying father’s last wish and says, “I am here, beloved.” With that Eduardo exhales and is gone. This is the excerpt from the book:

Amalia had heard the story of her parents’ love for each other all her life. Now more than ever, she wondered how her mother ever had the strength to face disgrace in order to gain the love of this man. Why did she part from him, whom she loved so much? How had a woman

with two small children found the courage to leave her country and become a stranger in a strange land? What kind of fierce determination possessed her to become an immigrant who would set out with no resources, no employable skills, and embark on such a risky venture?

  It had been over two decades since Eva left with her two daughters. Yet only now, in the country of her birth, did Amalia begin to grasp the pieces of the world that had shaped her mother. It was a world that now barely existed. She wanted to see it, catch it, one day describe it to her children before it disappeared, for, like all the moments we live, it was foam on a receding wave.

The second chapter, Eva, will take place in the 1920s and 30s and describe the society and culture of the time and how she develops into a young woman who will shock the world around her.

TWL: What part of the book was the most fun to write?

 Maria: I especially enjoyed writing about the contrast between adolescent Eva and her friend Marta. Eva is three years younger than her friend. Eva was by that age a coquette, Marta was guileless. Eva was introverted and impulsive. Marta was friendly but guarded. Eva had an air of self-confidence and was full of mischief. Marta was self-conscious and serious. Yet theirs was a friendship that would last a lifetime. In the chapter, Earthquake, before the impending earth turmoil. Eva is chewing gum while she nonchalantly speaks to her friend. Here are a few paragraphs from that scene.

   I have heard, said fifteen-year-old Eva, trying to be serious as she chewed gum and observed her friend’s reaction, that you can do black magic on a boy if you carry his photograph inside the sole of your shoe. In that way he will be under your complete control!

They were on their way to evening mass, the only excuse they could use to allow Eva’s grandmother to let her leave the house un-chaperoned. Marta laughed out loud. You don’t believe that! she said. She could see the streetcar that brought the boys from the swimming club approaching.

Why do you think Enrique is mad about me? said Eva, smugly removing his photo from inside her shoe and holding it up.

 I can’t believe it! You put his photograph in your shoe! exclaimed Marta, trying to grab the photo as Eva held on to it and buried the picture under her blouse.

 Now I know why he has been running after you! Marta said, beginning to wonder if such nonsense might be true. I wonder if it would work for me? she said enthusiastically. I will try to get Fernando Martin’s photo tonight!

Earthquake, is also the chapter when Eva and Eduardo first meet and begin their obsession for one another. It was fun to write.

TWL: What’s one fact about your book that would surprise people?

Maria: I think the landscape maybe a surprising and exotic one for people. It allows them to travel to Ecuador where the story takes place. Ecuador is a small country in the middle of the earth with fifty volcanoes as its spine. Readers will learn about the wondrous flora and fauna of that country which rises from the Pacific Ocean to the Andes snowcapped volcanic mountains and contains part of Amazon rain forest.

Moreover, the story takes place at a dramatic and glamorous time in history when the first World War ends, and it moves through the roaring 20s and 30s into the Second World War. Yet, it is all viewed from a slightly distant perspective because Ecuador was not part of those wars like much of the world was. It is also surprising to learn that Ecuador gave women the right to vote before many other countries did, including, our own.

TWL: What other books are you working on and when will they be published?

 Maria: I write books for children as well. I wrote an eco-social book, Youngen Finds Her Song, some years ago which I hope can one day be animated. The story is about a young bird lacking confidence who is encouraged to find her unique song by her friend and caretaker, Rufus an owl.  After the story was written, I created an audio version with joyful music and sound effects as well as the voices of the main characters, birds, and insects. So, when children read the book, their parents may also, scan the inside cover with their phones and the family can hear the book come to life! Technology makes magic sometimes.

Now, I am working on a book for children to about dreamland, Settle Down Little One, with a lullaby inside the cover of the book which can in the same way be scanned to hear the lullaby sung. I hope it will be out in 2022.

I am also working on an autobiography, Who Prays for the Butterflies? which will describe stages of my life which were transformative, written from the point of view of dreams and poetry. I look forward to sharing that journey because in much of my life, dreams have been a guiding force for me, and poetry is a profound form of language. I hope this book will also be available in 2022.

TWL: Finally, what message are you trying to get across with your book?

 Maria: Many of my books are about the power of relationship and friendship. This last one centers around that same theme. The family is central but the bonds we create with people who are not our blood relatives can be equally important and meaningful. I think in my final words below you will understand the message I was trying to get across in this recent novel.

TWL: Do you have any final words?

Maria: In the short time it has been out, I have received wonderful reviews for Defiance and Redemption, A Lifetime of Unbroken Bonds. Women as well as men have been moved by the story which reflects the ongoing struggles humanity has had with racism, sexism, economic disparity, and elitism. In my story three women face those isms. Readers identity with these strong female characters. No matter the country or culture, readers recognize them as our grandmothers, mothers, sisters, and aunts who chose self-determination over oppression and became immigrants seeking a new world with greater opportunity for their children. This fiction novel holds the truth that those characters were based on my family members who found that liberty in the United States!

I am moved to hear that the book is a page turner, or I only stopped reading because my eyes were sore. This is wonderful feedback. I hope to hear more!

 

Title: DEFIANCE AND REDEMPTION: A LIFETIME OF UNBROKEN BONDS
Author: Maria J. Andrade
Publisher: Clara Publishing
Pages: 250
Genre: Women’s Fiction/Historical Fiction/Magical Realism

BOOK BLURB:

Based on a true story, Defiance and Redemption, A Lifetime of Unbroken Bonds, brings to life the joys, dramas, and triumphs of two sisters, Eva and Victoria Alisio and their loyal friend Marta. The sisters are raised by their atheist Grandfather Marcus and religious Grandmother Maria Luisa. Eva, a proud and strong-willed young woman defies her family, society, and culture, faces scandal and disgrace, for her forbidden love affair. Victoria finds herself in the center of a multigenerational conflict as her benefactor bestows a great inheritance on her excluding the rightful heirs. Marta, loyal to the childhood bond with the Alisio sisters, brings humor and support to their twists and turns of fortune. The young women’s bond of love, and perseverance, carries them through ordinary and extraordinary losses, triumphs, and ultimately to their destiny in the United States.

An important novel about 20th Century women, Defiance and Redemption, is an absorbing epic that moves through decades and destinies. It blends personal and historical events into a collective tale of self-determination, love, and sisterhood.

PRAISE

“This book is an engrossing page turner which will pull you in and keep you cheering for your favorite actors until the very end! Defiance and Redemption is a unique book that tells a story that is both particular to a given time in Ecuador, but also universal in its themes of love, betrayal and survival.” – Nancy Mintie, Founder of Uncommon Good

“Reading Defiance and Redemption reminded me of a distant time when I read Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel. Like these writers, Maria Andrade took me through a captivating journey of love and deep passion. Being gripped by the strong emotions that the characters possess and what they did in the end moved me profoundly.” – Maria Donovan, Retired Verizon Executive

“In Defiance and Redemption, Maria Andrade weaves together history, biography, and fiction into a romantic love and a story of three women that defy the ability of patriarchal culture to define them. We see the young women grow up to rise above the shame that tries to silence and limit them. They learn to find their voices and make sacrifices to be true to themselves as women. They leave behind all that they knew to make a better life for themselves and their daughters. This is a book to remind women of all ages where we came from, and what it took to break out and thrive nearly a century ago. Women like these paved the way for all who came after and have the rights we have today.” – Nancy Poitou, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist

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The Writer’s Life

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