Hello Everyone! And Welcome!

Today we have Lyn Miller-Lachmann joining us to talk about her most recent historical novel, Eyes Open. This beautiful and powerful novel set in 1967 Portugal is Lyn’s first foray into writing a young adult novel in verse. The format is the perfect match for the substantial talents of the poet protagonist Sónia. As Kirkus says (with its accompanying star), it “allows Sónia’s poetic voice to shine.” 

Sónia’s voice is just one of the many aspects that shine in Eyes Open. I was struck by the intimate portrayal of Sónia, and how the reader is fully immersed in a young woman’s journey from naiveté to living life with the title’s “eyes open.” The novel begins with Sónia’s greatest rebellion being the rumor she started about one of her teacher-nuns being as old as Vasco de Gama. By the end, she is using her poetry to inspire others to stand up to Portugal’s brutal and oppressive government.

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Portugal 1967

Sónia thinks she knows what her future holds. She’ll become a poet, and together she and her artist boyfriend, Zé Miguel, will rise above the government restrictions that shape their lives. The restrictions on what Sónia can do and where she can go without a man’s permission. The restrictions on what music she can enjoy, what books she can read, what questions she can ask.

But when Zé Miguel is arrested for anti-government activities and the restaurant belonging to Sónia’s family is shut down, Sónia’s plans are upended. No longer part of the comfortable middle class, she’s forced to leave school and take a low-paying, grueling, dangerous job. She thought she understood the dark sides of her world, but now she sees suffering she never imagined. Without the protection of her boyfriend or her family, can Sónia find a way to fight for justice?

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Since Eyes Open is in verse, it’s a quick, yet engrossing read. It is written with depth of emotion and also lessons about Portugal’s history–at least for this reader, who up to this point knew little about Portugal’s more recent history.

To give you an idea of what I am talking about, here is one of my favorite passages:

I come from a people

who made lives

in the corner of Europe

on a scrap of land

between a hostile neighbor

and the sea.

And when the storms blew in

we cast our lot with the sea

because …. we knew that sea monsters

couldn’t be worse

than the human kind.

You see what I mean? It’s moving and compelling, showing us Portuguese history through the heart-journey of a girl trying to find her way in the world.

My question is: how did Lyn Miller-Lachmann do it? I know she has lived in Portugal and that she is fluent in Portuguese. But I’m wondering if there was one moment that inspired her to write Eyes Open. Was it learning about the oppression that was particularly directed against women? Or was it a specific conversation? I’m also wondering how Sónia revealed herself to Lyn. And how Lyn knew Sónia was a poet.

So, let’s turn things over to Lyn, who just returned from another visit to Portugal, and find out What Was on her…

Trips to Portugal that inspired Eyes Open: In 2012 my husband had a Fulbright Teaching Fellowship at a university in Lisbon, so we moved there for half the year. The person from whom we rented the apartment had a book of testimonials from political prisoners during the right-wing dictatorship that lasted from 1926 to 1974. As I learned Portuguese, I read these stories of people arrested, tortured, and imprisoned for speaking out against the regime. Some of the prisoners were teenagers, one arrested when he was 14 years old. That’s how the character of Zé Miguel, Sónia’s boyfriend, emerged, as I wondered where these boys came from, how they came to speak out against the dictatorship, and what happened to them in prison and after. In 2015 I started writing a novel from the point of view of Zé Miguel’s older sister. Sónia was then a secondary character, best known for starting a poetry club at her Catholic school where she and all her friends secretly wrote poems to honor Zé Miguel after his arrest. I came to realize, three years later, that Sónia was the most interesting character in that novel and I needed to put the earlier one aside and write her story – in verse.

Conversations with others that inspired Sónia: Many years ago, I taught high school social studies in Brooklyn for the New York City Public Schools. One semester I had a very nice boy named Miguel in my sophomore class, a conscientious student with neat printed handwriting, similar to my handwriting. He dropped out about a month into the semester because his family needed him to work, but he reappeared a month before the end of the semester with a huge bandage on his non-writing hand. He’d lost several fingers in an industrial accident. He could no longer work, so back to school he went. He hoped that if he could finish his education, he could speak out against the conditions of a job that had left him maimed for the rest of his life.

The United States has recently seen a resurgence of dangerous child labor, and in Portugal under the dictatorship it was common because in the 1960s children weren’t required to attend school beyond the third grade and by sixth grade public education was no longer free. When I began to think about Sónia’s story, I thought of Miguel and the stories he told me. Even though the factory where he worked illegally in New York City was very different from the laundry shed where Sónia works, his experience informed the way I imagined her situation.

List of hopes for the novel: Beyond the normal hopes we authors have – win major awards, become a bestseller – I see Eyes Open as particularly timely this year, when one of the major party nominees in the United States attempted to overturn the last presidential election and has expressed his desire to rule as a dictator if he wins this one.  In 1926, Portugal was a young and struggling democracy following the abdication of the king in 1910 and a disastrous involvement in the First World War. After years of unrest, a dictatorship seemed like the best, most stable solution, but Portugal’s 48-year dictatorship left the country poor and backward, bled dry by wars to maintain African colonies, and having lost 15 percent of the population to emigration. The dictator, António de Oliveira Salazar, went beyond censoring newspapers, books, music, and films to banning Levi’s jeans and Coca-Cola because dictators can pretty much get away with anything. I’d like readers to understand what daily life is like under a dictatorship, how powerless people are to determine the course of their lives, and the dreams and talents that are crushed in places without freedom. And fight as hard as they can to keep democracy.

At this point, you may be worried that Eyes Open is a “broccoli book” – good for you but not so much fun to read. Fear not! The novel is full of fights with sisters and angsty relationships as well as Sónia’s irreverent humor.

Most recent visit to Portugal: My visit to Portugal last month coincided with the 50^th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution that ended the 48-year dictatorship and brought freedom and stable democracy to the country. The theme of this year’s celebration was the need for vigilance in the face of rising authoritarianism in Portugal and around the world. A political party that called for the return to fascist dictatorship, the expulsion of the Roma, and the jailing of political opponents gained 20 percent of the vote in the last election. The public library in the northern city of Braga featured an exhibit of books banned under the dictatorship and a set of posters listing the freedoms that women gained because of the revolution, including the freedom to travel without the permission of a father or husband, to own property, to sign contracts, to sue for divorce, to have custody of children after a divorce, and to use contraception without a husband’s permission.

Recommendations for anyone wanting to visit Portugal today: It’s hard to recommend specific attractions without knowing what people are looking for – historical and cultural sites, nature, or relaxing on a beach. I do suggest, if you have time, to travel beyond the major cities of Lisbon and Porto to see the beauty of the Douro Valley, the campus of the University of Coimbra with its fifteenth century library and the Old Cathedral from the twelfth century, and Évora with its Roman ruins and Chapel of Bones. For more advice on visiting Portugal, check out my website, which features recommendations of other places to visit and dine and sites of special interest for children and teens.

List of new projects: My next project to be published is a translation of an illustrated prose poem, Our Beautiful Darkness, written by the Angolan author Ondjaki and illustrated by António Jorge Gonçalves. The story takes place in the late 1990s in Luanda, the capital of Angola, during a power outage. A teenage boy and girl sit outside his grandmother’s house, talking, but what he really wants is a first kiss with her. Beyond that, I have outlines of two different projects, one middle grade historical and one YA contemporary, but I haven’t made a commitment to either of them yet.

Wow, Lyn! Your journey and commitment to discovering Sónia’s story is impressive. The care you have taken is evident in the depth and beauty of what you’ve created.

I also appreciate the way you address the realities of life without democracy and protected rights. It’s so easy to take the lives we lead for granted. It’s so easy to think that current laws will protect us. Yet, books are banned more and more each day. And why is that? To borrow the words of Marko Kravos, who I heard speak in Bologna: The book “is a great opponent of evil… why else would violent bullies go to such lengths to destroy it?”

Thank you so much for stopping by, Lyn. I always enjoy our conversations. 

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You can keep up to date with Lyn Miller-Lachmann by visiting her online at lynmillerlachmann.com and by following her on Twitter at @LMillerLachmann and on Facebook at Lyn Miller-Lachmann.

If you would like to order Eyes Open, which was released by Carolrhoda Lab on May 7, 2024, click on the book below:

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If you would like to know more about me and my writing, please visit sandranickel.com.