My Ideal Reader

I imagine my ideal reader to be a woman. Her age is not really important. I think she could be anywhere from 18 to 80 years old. I see her reading my novel Different Flags and these blog entries and I am touched to discover that she can relate to Ani, the young protagonist of DF. My ideal reader can put herself in Ani's shoes, get under Ani's skin, spend a few days with her in California. She can feel the frustration that Ani must have felt before she took that all important trip to Argentina. She can feel Ani's feelings once she got to Buenos Aires and found out more problems there, problems that she wasn't sure she'd be able to resolve. My reader knows (maybe because it could also have happened to her) what a first adult love is all about. She can love Padre Luis as deeply as Ani herself loved him. She can discover that love in a foreign country, in a different culture. My reader must want to be educated about the habits of the Argentine people. She can get a sense of what it must be like to live in Buenos Aires for a year or two and not know if she'll ever belong there again. The questions she would ask are the same questions any one of us would ask if we suddenly found ourselves in a new place and we didn't have a visible map to guide us. She, like Ani, can understand that things are indeed done differently in Argentina but not as differently as people think. My reader can be an expatriate, someone displaced and not belonging anywhere anymore. My reader could also be a man, a man who has traveled around Latin America, or simply a man with interest in the history and culture of that part of the world. My reader can be you.