She’s a writer because beautiful prose seduces her and existential angst continues to plague her despite such preoccupations having gone out of fashion. She takes occasional refuge by invoking the spirit of Jane Austen to spin tales of love, loss, and finding one’s way—stories into which she weaves mystery or intrigue.
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After two heartbreaking losses, Luna wants adventure. Something and somewhere very different from the affluent, sheltered home in California and Hawaii where she grew up. An adventure in which she can also
make some difference. She ends up in place where she gets more than she bargained for.
Lucien, a worldly, well-traveled young architect, finds a stranger’s journal at a café. He has qualms and pangs of guilt about reading it. But they don’t stop him. His decision to go on reading changes his life.
Months later, they meet at a bookstore where Luna works and which Lucien frequents. Fascinated by his stories and his adventurous spirit, Luna volunteers for the Peace Corps. Assigned to Cambodia, she lives with a family whose parents are survivors of the Khmer Rouge genocide forty years earlier. What she goes through in a rural rice-growing village defies anything she could have imagined. Will she leave this world unscathed?
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Can you tell us what your new book is about?
The Shade Under the Mango Tree is an epistolary novel about a sheltered young woman hungry for adventure. Inspired by a young man who’s travelled the world, she goes to a rural village in Asia and steps into world steeped in an ancient culture and a deadly history. What she finds there defies anything she could have imagined. Will she leave this world unscathed?
As an epistolary novel, a good part of the story is told through a journal.
Can you tell us a little about your main and supporting characters?
Luna is of mixed blood—Hawaiian, Asian, and Caucasian. Her early years were spent with a loving grandmother in Hawaii. She’s bright, idealistic, and in the beginning, naive. She craves adventure but also wants to make some difference in the world.
Lucien calls himself a creative nerd, a worldly, well-travelled young architect who, at the start of the story, is focused on building his career. But he finds Luna’s journal at his favorite café and it changes his life.
Luna’s grandmother who’s Filipino-Spanish, has lived all her life in Hawaii. She’s warm, loving, and devoted to her children. A former teacher, she loves to garden while her boombox plays classical music. But Luna discovers something about her she didn’t expect.
Lucien’s grandparents also played a big role in his upbringing. They were former hippies who met at Woodstock. They ignited Lucien’s lust for adventure, supported his desire to drop out of his freshman year to travel the world, and then funded his two-year tour.
Jorani, Luna’s teenage “sister” in the rural village, is carefree, happy and ambitious. Until she learns about her parents’ past.
Your book is set in the San Francisco Bay Area and a rural village in Cambodia. Can you tell us why you chose this location in particular?
Why the San Francisco Bay Area? Simple. I live here. I know it very well—both its geographic and demographic characteristics. Better yet, I have a good feel for the people who live here, and the main protagonists represent some of those people. The setting moves to Cambodia more than halfway into the story. Luna wanted to go to a place very different from where she grew up.
How long did it take you to write your book?
Longer than I intended. I started it February 2018, but life intruded. I lost my husband from complications of Parkinson’s disease. I couldn’t write for all of 2019.
What has been the most pivotal point of your writing life?
I would say, it’s the moment I decided I was going to do it, that is, write fiction. I’ve always been involved in writing as a social science researcher, but I had to change my mindset to write fiction. One skill that’s helped from my previous life is doing research, which particularly helps in this novel. I’ve traveled to Asia, Europe, and North Africa, but I’ve never been to Cambodia.
What kind of advice would you give other cross-genre fiction authors?
To be a successful writer, you’re told to know the particular tropes of your chosen genre. But I just write stories and worry about the genre later. My novels end up crossing genres. And maybe that doesn’t help with sales. I guess I’m saying you shouldn’t do what I do. Still, maybe with good promotion and marketing, you’ll find a niche readership who’ll love your work.
