I have been a foreigner all my life, first as the child of diplomats, then as a political refugee, and now as an immigrant in the United States. Maybe that’s why a sense of place is so important in all my writing. Where do I belong? Where are my roots? Is my heart divided or has it just grown bigger? These are the questions faced by my protagonists in A Long Petal of the Sea, the title of which comes from a quote by Neruda.
