The Story Behind the Story

Running Away: When I was in high school, I was obsessed with running away. I wanted to take a bus to Venice Beach, rent an aparment, work at IHOP, and spend my days off work rollerskating on the boardwalk. It sounded like heaven.

When I finally did run away when I was 15 years old, I didn’t go to California. Instead I went to South Padre Island and Matamoros, Mexico. I always wondered what it would have been like if I kept going south through Mexico.

Crossing the Boarder: I used to go to Terlingua, a tiny little town near Big Bend National Park in the high desert of West Texas. My friends and I would pay a Mexican man $1 a piece to row us across the river to Mexico. We’d then rent burros from him and ride up the hill to Boquillas, Mexico.  So that’s the place where Rhonda crosses the river to Mexico to begin her quest to find her best friend Jesús, who has been deported to his home state of Oaxaca.

Traveling Across Mexico by Bus: After Rhonda crosses the border into Mexico and begins to pretend to be a Mexican boy named Angel, she rides a bus into the interior of Mexico. That part of the novel was inspired by the time I took a bus from East Austin almost all the way to Mexico City and then to Oaxaca.

Jesús, the Mexican yardman: When I was a child, my grandmother Tootie hired a man from Mexico named Jesús to take care of her yard. I assume he was in the country illegally; and once he painted the bottom 4 feet of her trees a day-glo white to protect them from bugs. All the people in my grandma’s nice neighborhood freaked out about it. But it didn’t seem strange to her because she traveled in Mexico so often and saw that people paint the bottom of their trees white all the time there. I couldn’t help wonder why Jesús had come to Texas and what his life in Mexico had been like.

After Jesús stopped working for my grandma Tootie she hired another man from Mexico named Moses.

Earthquakes: In 1985 there was a devastating earthquake in Mexico City. I was a little girl and I remember flying into Mexico City and looking out of the plane window and seeing all the collapsed buildings. It made a huge impression on me.  

Working with Wood: Rhonda/Angel wants to make animals out of wood; and she’s fascinated by an American carpenter she meets during her travels in Mexico. When I was writing THE EARTHQUAKE MACHINE, I was working as an apprentice carpenter in Durango, CO. So it was easy to write about the longing to make things out of wood.

Influences: My favorite YA book is Weetzie Bat by Francesca Lia Block. She does an amazing job telling a story that seems very real, but that’s also full of fantastical elements. She incorporates elements of magical realism into her books in a way that totally works.