Adelia Saunders

Adelia Saunders has a master's degree in international relations from Georgetown University and a bachelor's degree from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She has taught English in Paris, written for an independent newswire at the United Nations, and assisted an agricultural economist in Uganda. She grew up in Durango, Colorado, and lives with her husband and two children in New York City. Indelible is her first novel.

From the author's Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: How did you come up with the idea for your novel Indelible, and for your three main characters?

A: The seeds of the book started when my husband and I were doing archival research in Vilnius, Lithuania. I spent a lot of time looking at old documents.

I was intrigued by the idea that long after a person died, all that was left in an official sense would be a few data points—a birth certificate, a marriage certificate, occasionally a letter written from the person, something that would hint at something more interesting.

But mostly it was about the bureaucratic data points—it was interesting filling in [between them]. What if you were to know what’s in a person’s file—if the person were wearing it on their bodies for one unfortunate person to read? [That was the idea] for Magdalena.

I am interested in genealogical research—for so many people, it’s so fascinating; it’s interesting what a hold it has on us, how people get interested in researching our families.

My father had done a lot of research. One of the characters he got interested in was someone related to me, my mother’s grandfather who abandoned his family when his children were very young and went to California and became a minor screenwriter.

From that came the idea of a man [the character Richard] looking for one family member who happened to be famous—he had a...[read on]

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--Marshal Zeringue