Discussion Questions:

1) Seashells are ever-present in this novel. How are these objects a controlling metaphor in the story? Are there any similarities between the nature of seashells and the nature of any of the characters?

2) Monica is said to have an unusual talent for massage 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, is never found in the span in of the story. Do you think that 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 caused 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 that 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 repeat her mother’s footsteps in any way? 

An Interview With The Author:

What interests you in a novel as a writer? A novel allows you to get to know characters in a prolonged and intimate way, to hear their private thoughts, to witness their joys, fears, shame. A novel is the only space where you can freely listen to what other people talk about behind closed doors. The extended time span allows you to appreciate the consequences of the characters’ decisions as they unfold over time.

Is there a part of you in Monica Winters? Monica and I have a lot of biographical elements in common and we have a similar temperament. If she were real, I think we would be great friends, but she’s not me. Unlike Monica, I’ve always had a very normal and loving family life.

Who or what does Alma Borrero represent? Alma Borrero was the character who was most interesting to write about because she is the one most unlike me. She is a terrible wife and mother; but I admire her for rejecting the cultural expectations that clash with her personal ideals. Early in the process of writing Heiress, I read Janet Fitch’s White Oleander, and the character of Alma is highly influenced by Ingrid Magnussen, a beautiful, brilliant woman who is coldly committed to a strict personal code of ethics that collide quite violently with the norm. Like Ingrid, Alma is constantly having going against the grain in order to honor the vision she has for her future. Alma also shares a few chromosomes with the fiercely independent Trueba women in Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits. I admire tough women because I haven’t always been gutsy, especially when I was younger. I find that Latin American culture can be especially inflexible in its expectations about what a female should do with her time, how she should look and how she should behave. There is the emphasis on physical beauty, social status, on courtship and marriage. Alma isn’t remotely interested in any of these standard feminine values. Her intelligence is unappreciated and her passion for the sea treated as rebellion. The tragedy of the story is rooted in the moment when Alma compromises her values and marries someone who is socially acceptable to her parents, thus allowing herself to be trapped in a loveless marriage.

What kind of research did you have to do to write Heiress? I had to do some library research on the details of El Salvador’s civil war. I lived in El Salvador during those years, but I was about Monica’s age and so my perspective was that of a child. Studying up on the details allowed me to process those terrible days with an adult mind and to frame Monica’s story in that larger context. Marine science and head trauma were subjects that I had to research far more extensively, and in addition to consulting books, academic and professional journals, I interviewed experts in both subjects. Entering the world of seashells was magical for me. I was living in Miami at the time, and I remember this one perfect, sunny day when I got in my car and drove out to Sanibel Island to visit a shell museum. I spent several hours speaking with the marine scholars there and I got to view and handle cones from around the world. In the quaint downtown area, I found shell boutiques that catered to serious collectors, where the rarest and most beautiful specimens were displayed (and priced) like jewels. After I’d gathered more information on shells than I could ever use in twenty novels, I drove around the island and combed the shore for its famously abundant seashells, gathering a few souvenirs to remind me of this lovely day. Since I was so intensely immersed in writing this novel at the time, I experienced one of those child-like moments where, for a few seconds, I forgot that my characters were imaginary. I remember looking around and thinking, wow, if Alma ever goes missing again, this is the first place I’d look. She’d be in heaven here.

What compelled you to write so lovingly about seashells and the sea? Some of the fondest memories I have of my childhood in El Salvador are of combing the shore for seashells during Semana Santa, Holy Week. Most people take that week off and head to the beaches, usually in groups. There are crowded, popular beaches and there are the more remote, undeveloped areas, and I enjoy the latter far more. Every once in a while, I’d find a seashell 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 classified 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 seashells in general, I discovered that there is an entire sub-culture of people who are obsessed with seashells; scholars and collectors who attend conferences and pay thousands of dollars for the rarest specimens. Although I am not a collector myself, I could empathize with this passion, 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 shore all my life: in El Salvador, Connecticut and Miami. For a few years, I lived in one of those high-rise apartments with a floor-to ceiling view of Biscayne Bay, and I loved watching sailboats parade across my living room. Eventually, I decided to join the fun and I signed up for sailing lessons in Coconut Grove. I’ve also been on many sailing trips off the coast of New England with my uncle and aunt and I borrowed heavily from those experiences for the chapter where Will Lucero sails out of New London. Like many people, I derive both joy and inner calmness from being near the sea. There is something special about El Salvador’s virginal coast that is intensely spiritual and artistically inspiring to me—maybe it’s the birds, 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 pale-colored sand has a festive, vacationing spirit, but a lonely shore of black sand invokes richer, 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 an area called Playa El Cuco on the eastern shore.

Why did you choose to write about someone who is in a persistent vegetative state? The subject surged up during the process of mining my own life for material. When I was eleven, my brother, who was just a toddler at the time, contracted a virus that left him in a coma for two weeks. I have never been in a coma, but I have fainted several times, and each time, I experience this sensory rush, a loud ringing in my ears and flashing lights in my vision. It’s very scary. From those fainting episodes and my brother’s coma, my interest expanded to prolonged and permanent unconsciousness. I began to compile information on the subject out of pure curiosity, so when I decided to write about a woman who had sustained a head injury, I already had some basic knowledge. Along the way, I discovered that there are many aspects of unconsciousness that still remain a mystery to science, and can therefore be claimed by imagination. Conventional wisdom dictates that Yvette’s higher brain functions would simply be shut off. But no one knows exactly how much thought or emotion can filter through those areas of partial damage. I imagined that if some thoughts were to stumble out from among that wreckage, they would cause Yvette to dwell in this dream-like claustrophobic state from which she would desperately want to escape.

What was the most challenging aspect of writing this book? The biggest challenge was interlocking two completely unrelated plot lines and two very different settings. I was excited and challenged by the prospect of knitting together such unlikely elements as El Salvador, its war, Connecticut, seashells and a woman in a coma; but eventually, I ran into a wall. The two plot lines just weren’t connecting in a natural way. I struggled with this for some time, then reluctantly decided to drop Yvette’s story, figuring I could use the material in a future novel. I turned my attention to selecting the species of mollusk that would most interest Alma. CONIDAE, I decided, are the sexiest because they are both beautiful and deadly, and so I began to narrow my research to just cones. One day, I came across a study that offered some evidence that cone venom, if administered immediately after a brain injury, can block the destructive path of the trauma. It turns out that there is a natural “cascade of chemicals” that is released inside the brain after an injury that inflicts a secondary injury far worse than original insult. Up until this point, I had read a lot about the chronic pain applications of cone venom, but this head trauma research was on the cutting edge. I was amazed at this discovery because ultimately, science was providing me with the link between all those unrelated plot elements—and it was a connection far more interesting than anything I could have invented on my own.