And I think that’s threatening to many watching them from the outside. In response to all that, the Nomeolvides women become their own community.

But this book is also about what you get made into by rumor there’s so much talk about these women, everybody else trying to decide what the truth of them is. In what way do the characters in Wild Beauty, both from the family that lives in La Pradera and the surrounding town accept magic as part of their world?ĪMM: The way the Nomeolvides women tend these gardens, the ways that they and their loves are cursed, that’s accepted as part of the lore of this town. Q: It’s a feature of stories categorized as magical realism that the characters accept magic as simply part of regular life. But amid that kind of brutality, there’s also family I wanted to write characters who were looking out for each other even in a place that doesn’t really want them. Another is that there’s a brutal history of child immigrants doing dangerous jobs, jobs that are already dangerous if you’re a grown man, and either the people doing the hiring don’t care or they look the other way. And the fact that we sometimes don’t hear the stories of what happens when the farms fail, when the harvest dies, what you do when you’re trying to take care of your loved ones. Q: Can you talk a little about your inspiration for the character Fel and his story?Īnna-Marie McLemore: Without giving too much away, I’ll say this: I started with his history, where he comes from, his family.

Wild beauty anna marie mclemore