Chula Vista author Patrick Macfarland is coming to Mmm…Cakes on Dec. 10 for a book reading and book signing of his newly released “Fairy Tale of a Mexican Family” from 4-5:30 p.m.
Macfarland, raised in Chula Vista, said though his name might not sound like it, his family is Mexican, with his parents growing up in Ensenada, Baja California, was a teacher for 10 years, and ran for city council ian 2018. But his passion has been writing, with his first novel released in 2013, “Plum Crazy.” This is the second book in what Macfarland said is a trilogy of books.
“It is a little bit about a cross-border family, very similar to my life, living in Chula Vista and going to Ensenada every weekend or a couple times a month as a kid. I was definitely a person of two cultures, Mexican and American.”
He said he wanted to write a book about a Mexican family influenced by American culture, like television, music, Thanksgiving holidays.
“My family celebrated Thanksgiving,” he said. “My grandfather started celebrating Thanksgiving in the 1950s and he was one of the first families in Ensenada to do that. He really loved that holiday and what it meant, and the tradition behind it,” adding how many families that live across the border are influenced by American culture.
Macfarland said it was this mixed culture behind the desire to write the book, as it is much different than books about Mexican families.
“I also wanted to write about something that is unique,” he said. “Portraying things that would be hard to talk about in Mexican families, especially in the 1980s which is when this book is set. This fight of generations of typical values before us versus the values the current generations believe in. That fight between the past and the present at that time in the 1980s.”
Wanting to dedicate these books to his family, he said he began seriously writing this book after his grandfather passed away.
“My family means a lot to me and in a way this novel and this trilogy is an ode to my family,” he said. “They influenced me a lot through my childhood and adult life.”
This book is about a Mexican family, with three siblings, Damian, Alexandra, and Victoria, each struggling with their own secrets, he said.
“They have religious and conservative parents that have not agreed with what their children are doing, or what those secrets could be,” he said. “We have Damian, who is scared to come out of the closet to his parents. He has to deal with that and then how the family will view him and whether or not they will accept him. This is in the 1908s so there is a backdrop of the AIDS crises taking place and how that influences how the family will see Damian.”
Damian’s older sister Alexandra finds out about his sexuality and struggles with that because she thinks it is a sin, he said. Alexandra marries an American surfer and struggles getting pregnant. Victoria has the opposite reaction to Damian’s sexuality, supports and accepts him, but her own secret is she finds out that she is pregnant and must marry her boyfriend.
“This throws Victoria into a life she did not know, and it was much different than she thought it would be,” he said.
“I focus more on the siblings, the parents are not secondary, but the father Jaxier owns a cattle ranch and vineyard in Ensenada. And Guadalupe, the beautiful wife has a lot of resentment towards the husband and how he has acted over the past 40 years they have been married.”
Macfarland said the book is fiction, but he did take some family stories he has heard from his mother and grandparents, and being inspired, taking those stories and putting them into his “own world,” while keeping the characters fictitious.
“I would actually love to see people I have not seen in years, and several people who have bought my book that I have never met, I would like to meet them and ask them what their favorite part of the book was. I am doing the book signing in a local Chula Vista business and it is nice to support them, and it is LGBTQ run, so it is nice to support both,” Macfarland said about the book reading and signing event.
“Fairy Tales of a Mexican Family” was released Nov. 16 and is available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
