It came to her in an ordinary conversation, just like any other, Wall Street Journal veteran and current Los Angeles Times writer Sonia Nazario said in an interview with The Badger Herald.

The conversation occurred between Nazario and her maid, Carmen, who after being asked if she was having any more children, broke down and told Nazario of the four she left behind in her native Guatemala.

“She said, ‘I’m a single mom, my husband has left for another woman and most days I can feed my children once, maybe twice, but most nights they cry with hunger,'” Nazario said.

This sparked Nazario’s interest in what soon became a Los Angeles Times newspaper series garnering two Pulitzer Prize awards and was ultimately manifested into the novel, Enrique’s Journey.

Chosen as this year’s Go Big Read at the University of Wisconsin, Enrique’s Journey tells the story of a 17-year-old Honduran boy throughout his dangerous journey across 15,000 miles to the U.S. in search of his mother.

“It just struck me that this is an amazing story to tell of the millions of women who have come [to the U.S.] and the what are now about 100,000 children entering the U.S. alone each year,” Nazario said.

Nazario said after the conversation with Carmen she knew she wanted to write about the phenomenon of millions of women coming to the U.S. and the children who followed them.

She then set out to find a boy in Central America to follow. Realizing this was an unrealistic expectation because of the dangers a 15-year-old boy would face, Nazario decided to find someone in Mexico to discuss his experiences and then to recreate the child’s journey.

A nun pointed her to Enrique while he stayed at a church in northern Mexico. Nazario described Enrique as honest, on the road for two months on his eighth attempt with a typical story and, most importantly, willing to have his story told.

After spending time with Enrique, the two parted ways: Enrique went north to reconnect with his mother, and Nazario went south to Honduras to recreate his journey.

“I was trying to write the story through these narrative highs and lows which allowed me to add that level of detail I hope allows [readers] to sit there on the train and be with [Enrique],” Nazario said.

Nazario made the trek twice before finishing the novel.

Along the way, she encountered several dangerous events including almost being swept off a freight train by a branch and being grabbed by a gangster – the latter of which resulted in a slight case of post-traumatic stress syndrome resulting in six months of therapy.

All of this, she said, was just another part of the research process.

“I took the journey twice, three months each time,” Nazario said. “I had also done months of reporting first and a huge amount of research after. I was trying to convey 12-years of this boy’s life, thousands of miles and the eight attempts he made – so it was a lot of territory.”

She also highlighted the determination these children had as they not only had to go through similar perils but repeatedly.

She described the transition of writing a novel as a way to get move involved in the story, stating she was becoming more of an advocate.

“With a book much more than the newspaper series, people want you to not only explain the problem but what they can do about it,” Nazario said.

Nazario said these actions included creating more jobs back in the immigrants’ home countries, gaining a fuller understanding and bringing this awareness to politics.

The only daughter of an immigrant family to be born in the U.S., Nazario said she knew what it was like to have one foot in both worlds and to feel a bit different than everyone else, especially while growing up in both Kansas and Wisconsin.

Nazario said she was always interested in writing about the experiences of other similar people but that she was also influenced by actions after her father’s death when she was 13.

Then, she moved to her mother’s native Argentina at a crucial moment in the country’s history.

Experiencing the effects of The Dirty War just as the military was about to take power and kill approximately 30,000 people, Nazario said she felt strongly that a lot of what happened was a result of a lack of information.

Journalists were unable to report on the happenings, information was not being disseminated and a lot of people were operating with ignorance, Nazario said.

This, she said, was also a motivating factor in writing Enrique’s Journey as the novel allows readers an inside look into a migrant family.

“I think that in a time of enormous hostility towards immigrants, the first step is trying to understand who our new neighbors are and what motivated them in to coming here,” Nazario said.

This, she said, would help with policy debates, as the current tactic of pitting conservative against liberal techniques is not benefiting anyone.

Nazario said she will be speaking tonight on a variety of ways to help immigrants stay home and be employed, including strategies such as trade policies, micro loans, family planning programs and supporting certain kinds of governments.

Currently on a tour across the U.S. and having hit nine states in the past three weeks alone, Nazario said the experience is “fabulous,” as many students after listening to her lecture want to get involved.

What was once Nazario’s ordinary conversation has now become a story with the power to impact immigration politics.

Nazario will be speaking tonight at 7 p.m. in Varsity Hall in Union South.