Why did I write a novel about a famous rock star who gets involved with a musician from El Salvador? I thought I was going to write a book about my Southern grandmother and her life, but I scrapped it because I realized that I wasn’t ever going to understand my racist Granny on more than a surface level. I could only guess at her motivations, but could never truly grasp their roots or come to terms with them. And I couldn’t spend time with a protagonist whose heart I didn’t love. I loved her, but I didn’t respect her.

When I first began to write A Light Rain of Grace, I was interested in the seeming contradiction that poor, displaced people often seem to have more joy in their lives than many rich, privileged rock stars. I sensed that at the core of the story would be the supposition that it is through gratitude and service to others that we fulfill our destinies—that self-absorption can make you miserably shortsighted and discontented.

I also wanted to tell the story of what happened in Central America in the 1980s, when Guatemala took over the number one spot in the world for the worst human rights abuses. The fact that the U.S. trained and supported the murderous “death squads” usually receives about a paragraph in history books, yet the impact of our actions has come back to haunt us through the influx of “illegal aliens” flocking to America.

Women of Lake Atitlan

Because we effectively crushed the ability of Guatemala and El Salvador to build equitable societies, the people remain unable to sustain themselves and their families in their own countries. The wealthy minority still retains most of the land and resources, leaving the indigenous people to fend for themselves in societies that offer no opportunities for education and advancement through hard work.

My mother, Bonnie, and I en route to El Salvador (1975)

I visited El Salvador in 1975, the day after the first big massacre—purely by coincidence. I witnessed first hand the situation there, and when I returned home, the mainstream media was reporting the problems as communist intervention in Central America. It was a lie, and I knew it because I had seen with my own eyes the truth. The rebellion was not about communism versus capitalism, but rather about land redistribution so the poor could survive. United Fruit (an American company) owned a disproportionate share of the land that rightly belonged to the indigenous people…people who because they had no records of land ownership, were cheated out of their birthrights. I saw starving people whose humanity was disregarded by my own wealthy, educated Salvadoran friends.

I had gone to El Salvador with my Salvadoran friend, my mother, my brother, and his wife. My mother had warned me about all the suffering she had encountered on a previous visit—that the sheer number of sick, lame, homeless, hungry adults and children would shock and sicken me. We didn’t see any such people. We later were told (by a hotel owner in Guatemala) that they (the beggars) had been killed so they wouldn’t offend the sensibilities of tourists who flocked to San Salvador for The Miss Universe contest. Was it true? Who knows? It was hard to believe that something so blatantly evil could occur, but where were they? My mother kept asking if they had been relocated, but she couldn’t get an answer…

Jeannette with children in Santiago, Atitlan

We went from El Salvador to Guatemala, where my mother was intending to build a hotel at Lake Atitlan. She had traveled the world and fallen in love with Guatemala. The military and the poor street people were in full force all over Guatemala, but it was still an enchanting land. The Mayas in the villages around Lake Atitlan lived in thatched-roof huts, grew their own food on the terraced hillsides, wove their own textiles, and wore gorgeous hand-embroidered clothing that marked their origins. The people were warm and seemed to like us, in spite of our government’s support of their military’s campaign to subject and even eradicate them.

Things were just beginning to heat up for Guatemala at that time—the mid seventies. I had no clue about revolutions or Banana Republics or military dictatorships. I observed my surroundings with innocent eyes.

First visit to Lake Atitlan

That first trip marks the beginning of my interest in Central America…things happened…my mother witnessed a massacre first-hand…the people in our photo album were murdered…genocide occurred in Guatemala…our tax dollars supported it.

Later, I’ll write more about what happened to my mother, but I’ll leave you with her first survival story for now. She was staying in Guatemala City in 1976 at her usual hotel the night of the huge earthquake that leveled much of the city in the early morning hours. That hotel collapsed and most of the people staying there were killed. My mother wasn’t there. Earlier that night, she got mad at the hotel owner because he kicked a street kid. She was so outraged at his inhumanity that she packed her bags and moved to a different hotel…one that withstood the earthquake. That incident is indicative of the way my mother operates in the world. Currently, she is working with two schools she helped found in Santiago, Atitlan—the site of the massacre she witnessed.