About the Author

sandra rodriguez barron

My story begins when my father, Juan Rodriguez (born in Puerto Rico and raised mostly in Connecticut) was moved by the call to service proclaimed by President John F. Kennedy. When my dad was barely out of his teens, he joined the first band of U.S. Peace Corps volunteers and was sent to the tiny republic of El Salvador. There, he went on to do many wonderful things for the poor, including founding two schools that are still in operation. Along the way, he met and married my mother, Yolanda del Cid. After the four years in the Peace Corps, he went to work for Save the Children in the Dominican Republic. That's when I appear in the story.

My parents decided that I would be born in Puerto Rico, and so I arrived in Caguas in October of 1967. After spending a few more years saving children in the Dominican Republic, my dad moved us to New Britain, Connecticut and he finished up his education and became a high school chemistry teacher in the Hartford Public School System.

Eventually, my parents began to miss the Salvadoran lifestyle and so we moved to El Salvador in 1973.

Both my parents had jobs at the school I attended, La Escuela Americana, which my character Monica attends in Heiress.

Less than a decade after we made a new life in El Salvador, the violence that erupted during the civil war (1980-1992) became overwhelming. One day, my parents decided that we had to leave after they witnessed a person being shot and killed at a local farmer's market. They shipped our belongings and we drove up the Pan-American highway in a 1969 Chevy Nova without air conditioning through the Guatemalan mountains (gorgeous!), Mexico (a cliché, but we had to bribe a policeman to get out of a supposed traffic infraction) and Texas (one hundred and twelve degrees Fahrenheit) and continued until we reached my aunt's house in East Hampton, Connecticut.

The trip took 14 days. I was twelve and my little brother, Orlando, (shown in a 1980 passport photo) was three years old.

We spent the next decade living in Middlefield, Connecticut, land of apple orchards and autumn harvest festivals. Eventually I went on to major in communications at the University of Connecticut. The highlight of those years was definitely the semester I spent at the Institute for American Universities in Aix-en-Provence, France, during my junior year. This photo on the left was actually taken in Spain, while on a horse-drawn carriage ride somewhere in Sevilla, that same year. To me, the lovely tunnel of trees symbolizes the magic of being young.

When I was twenty-five, I grew bored with my life in New England and decided to shake things up a bit by moving to Miami. When I arrived, I didn't know anyone. I kept asking myself, what did I do, am I nuts? I began to write. I worked as a fundraiser. I dated, went dancing, had many unforgettable weekends in the Keys (I am pictured here parasailing just off the shores of Key West). I missed my family back home, but I stayed in Miami, because I had a feeling I was in the right place. I began to take creative writing classes. Eventually, I parachuted into an entirely new life.

I met my husband, Bob Barron, in Ft. Lauderdale and we were married in 2001. Upon meeting (over a keg of beer at a Superbowl party) we each declared ourselves to be children of great fathers. We immediately bonded on this shared adoration of our dads--a belief that our fathers were men of extraordinary moral character, generosity and intellect. We think our mothers are superb too, and we continue to live with a keen awarness of the struggles and sacrifices that our families made to make us who we are today.

Although I had dreamed of writing a novel since I was seven years old, it wasn't until 1994 that I got serious about writing. In 1996 I enrolled in Florida International University's Creative Writing program and since I was working full time (in the field of fund raising), it took me seven years to finish the coursework and complete a novel manuscript. The title of that manuscript was Negarena, which evolved into The Heiress of Water.

In 2003, I gave birth to my son, Patrick Daniel, at only 29 weeks of pregnancy (40 is full term). He weighed three pounds and spent two months in the neonatal intensive care unit at Mercy Hospital in Miami.

Five days after he got out, we moved to Connecticut. This time it was for Bob's job, and it marked the third time in my life that I was moving to Connecticut. Patrick and I spent the next year in quasi-isolation; his lungs and immune system were too weak to risk going out in public. A full year passed before I was able to begin the process of seeking publication for my finished manuscript.

Patrick is now strong and well. The Heiress of Water has been published, and I'm working on a second novel.

Inspired by our father's life of service, my Salvadoran-born brother joined the U.S. Military. Now thirty years old, he is officially a Veteran of Foreign Wars. We are so very proud of him and thankful for his service to our country.

My parents retired to El Salvador in 2002. My beloved dad passed away on August 31, 2006. He was sixty-four years old. He was my hero, my very foundation. I miss him terribly.