FAMILIES IN STORIES: by Mary Louise Sanchez

My soon to debut book, The Wind Called My Name,

is based on my mother's life growing up in a small southern Wyoming town during the Great Depression. Her Hispanic family plays a big part in the story.  Below is a picture of the real Margarita Sandoval with her brother, Ernesto.

When I was writing the Author's Note, I often thought I should include a genealogy chart because my two maternal great-grandmothers are in the story, as well as my maternal grandparents, and some of my mother's siblings.

The family in my story is intact, but that was the case for many families during the Great Depression era, even though the fathers were sometimes away working.  In my story, the father and eldest son are working for the Union Pacific Railroad in Wyoming, while the remainder of the family is in New Mexico.

After a year, they are reunited in Wyoming, but do not have their large extended family nearby, and now they must rely only on each other to be strong in the face of adversity.

So many children's books today show a picture where children deal with divorce and even abandonment, but I want readers to see a strong family unit and how it deals with injustices of the time. Hopefully readers will come away with a sense of what family meant to the Sandovals.

Here are some middle grade historical fiction books that exemplify the kind of family unit you will read about in my novel, The Wind Called My Name. The release date is September 18, 2018 which happens to be the birthday of my maternal grandmother, Josefita (Maes) Sandoval.