“I get a lot of mail from boys in detention centers, including one from a center where they only had a few copies of my novel,” she says. They feel like they don’t have choices, and I hope my books inspire them to get out of the gang and, like Alex, find a way to be the hero.”Įlkeles, who has spoken at juvenile detention centers, is gratified that her novels about the Fuentes brothers have struck a chord with many teens who might not normally pick up a book.

“These boys have it rough, and my heart goes out to them. “It took the kids a couple of days to realize that I was down-to-earth and cool,” she says. That’s what fired me.”Īs part of her research to create her novels’ gang-tied characters, Elkeles flew from her suburban Chicago home to New Jersey, where she hung out with gang members. I thought, ‘What if someone from one side of the tracks fell in love with someone on the other side-how would friends and parents deal with it?’ And the Latino community is huge on honoring family and on brotherhood. My father was Israeli, and my husband is as well, and the push-and-pull of cultural differences fascinates me. “The Hispanic community that lived on one side-literally-of the tracks, and the kids living in huge mansions on Lake Michigan went to the same school. “I based it on my high school’s rival, Highland Park High School in Illinois,” she explains. Elkeles’s own hometown provided inspiration for the trilogy.

Perfect chemistry series book 4