Maria Padian’s new novel, How To Build a Heart (Algonquin, Jan. 28), is an exploration of family, community, and self-discovery centering on Isabella “Izzy” Crawford, a multiethnic teenager caught between worlds and trying to find a way through with her mother and younger brother after their Marine father’s death in Iraq. Padian, the author of Wrecked and other novels, answered some questions about the book.

Like Izzy, you are a daughter of two cultures: your Irish father’s and your Latina mother’s. How much of your own experience informed the character?

I grew up identifying as white, living in the same small town, enjoying economic stability. So…very different from Izzy in those ways. However, like Izzy, I always felt ethnically adrift. I look nothing like my blond-haired, blue-eyed father; I struggle to speak my mother’s first language, Spanish. Growing up felt like having a guest pass to a club I couldn’t join. I yearned to belong, but whenever I attempted to embrace aspects of one identity or another, I felt like a fraud. I leaned into those feelings when writing Izzy: the yearning to belong and the suspicion that you never will.

Izzy finds herself between her Catholic, Puerto Rican mother and her estranged Methodist, white American grandmother. How did you approach writing the intergenerational stories of these three very different women?

I drew very heavily from my personal background as well as the family I married into. I’m Catholic with Hispanic roots, but my husband is a white guy from North Carolina, and I’ve been to Southern reunions like the one in the book, although, in the interest of full disclosure, I have never sampled liver mush. And the characters in the book are fictional, inspired by but not directly drawn from actual people. That said, it was easy to conjure them imaginatively given my background.

One of the most striking moments in How To Build a Heart is when a character says, “Blood makes you related, but loyalty makes you family." What does that mean to you?

Well, it’s a very Spanish saying, so it will be familiar to many readers. It’s also how I grew up: I had more so-called aunts and uncles who were not actual blood relatives than I can count. But in the context of this novel, it’s really the key. Since her father died, Izzy has moved from place to place, yearning for permanence and “family,” and [she] is puzzled/saddened/angered by the absence of relatives. Although she can justify this from her mother’s side (they all live far away in Puerto Rico), understanding why they have lost touch with her father’s family in North Carolina troubles her. Getting to the heart of this question drives the plot and becomes Izzy’s literal journey. Ultimately, she recognizes that support and love and loyalty—not DNA—create a family.

The story is also full of complex female friendships, especially with Izzy’s best friend, Roz, and new friend, Aubrey. How do they impact Izzy’s life?

Although wildly different, both friendships force Izzy to confront herself and her own motivations. With Aubrey: How much of that friendship is fueled by a selfish desire to get close to [Aubrey’s] hot brother and his cool friends? How much is real compassion and admiration? With Roz: Is Izzy heartless when she backs off from her? Or is she being smart to recognize that Roz makes bad choices that could drag them both down? I struggled with Roz myself! And here’s a little secret: I changed the ending of the book several times apropos Roz.

Roz is such a complex girl, and you found a great way to do her story justice in the end.

She’s a girl we all know in a situation we’re all familiar with. I expect readers will have a lot to say about her!

The novel examines racism and privilege head-on in a way that feels very topical. Is it important to you as writer to address contemporary topics such as these?

I’d love to write a good vampire romance, but my imagination just doesn’t work that way! I wonder if it’s all those years I worked as a news reporter. Realistic fiction feels right to me. My goal, however, is simply to tell a compelling story, not write the news. Show, don’t tell. Or as Henry James put it: “Dramatize. Always dramatize.”

Ana Grilo is co-editor of The Book Smugglers blog and co-host of the Fangirl Happy Hour podcast.