At sixteen, Fajardo began a correspondence with her Colombian father, a period that coincided with her discovery of magical realism. Growing up in the Twin Cities suburbs and Minnesota’s northern woods, she had little connection to her birthplace and to her father, an artist who lived far away. The only images she had of Colombia were grainy family photos and news reports of the country’s violence in the early 1990s.
Fajardo’s first letter, titled “Dear Dad,” was sent in a thin blue airmail envelope that arrived in her suburban mailbox while she was reading Isabel Allende’s House of the Spirits. The exchange of letters continued across three thousand miles, and she read works by Allende, Laura Esquivel, and Gabriel García Márquez in tandem with her correspondence.
She describes how the fantastical elements of magical realism—such as the “ice in the middle of the jungle” and “girls that became witches” in Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude—mirrored the surreal memories of her childhood in a Colombian courtyard and the creaking floors of a house at the end of a one‑lane bridge. These parallels helped her feel a sense of truth about her identity and origins.
After years of epistolary contact, Fajardo traveled to Colombia in her early twenties. She prepared for the visit by rereading the novels that had guided her, and the wilderness around the airport reminded her of the jungle of Macondo. The reunion with her father was described as a moment where “the wilderness surrounding the airport hummed like the jungle of Macondo.”
Fajardo’s experience illustrates how magical realism can serve as a bridge between personal history and literary tradition, allowing readers to explore identity through a blend of the ordinary and the fantastical. Her book, The Many Mothers of Dolores Moore, is now available from Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.