“His name means “wonder worker”. This is what the social worker told them when she called them at Anadrasis’s office to let them know the child was up for urgent adoption.”

The little miracle worker in Elena Marutsu’s latest novel, The Miracle of Redemption (published by Kichli), is called Moussa. This is a fifteen-year-old Somali who enters the life of a modern Greek family, carrying with him, in addition to memories and experiences, only a red backpack. In real life, in the author’s family, the child who arrived by parachute jump – a gift and a test at the same time – is a nine-year-old girl from Afghanistan.

“The novel was written and finished before S. came to our house,” says Ms. Marutsu, the foster mother of S., a little girl who has been living with them for more than a year. “I started writing when we started the underwriting process, which took nine months. During this time, while we met with social workers, psychologists, specialists of social services of institutions and the municipality, the theme of the book awakened in me. I filled it out, the last item was filled in, and a day later the social worker called us and said that the little girl needs a foster family, and if we want, we can meet with her.”

I had questions: what can happen to the family after the appearance of someone else’s child?

In her eighth book, Elena Marutsu comes very close to the here and now of her personal life, but without being autobiographical. “I don’t want reality to get in the way of my imagination and take it somewhere else,” she comments when we ask her if she has worked as a registrar of the present, as a creator of a book-document. Redemptive Miracle is fiction because I had no interest in capturing my experience of growing up in foster care. But taking into account the fact that a second child will come to the house (s.s. her biological daughter is about the same age as S.), I had questions: what can happen to the family after the arrival of someone else’s child? Gradually, these possible fictional scenarios began to take shape in my imagination and were captured in the book.

face in the dark

The story, which unfolds in three parts with alternating third-person and first-person narration, centers on a teenage refugee, only the author intentionally keeps his face in the dark. “From the very beginning, I decided that the figure of the stranger should remain blurred. Its mystery has not been solved, because I am more interested in showing what each family member projects on the “mirror” that they embody, ”says the author. When 50-year-old Rachel, wife and mother of two daughters, thinks about parenting, personal divisions are activated and open wounds that never heal. The couple is going through a crisis and the first crack in the relationship is manifested in how one and the other perceive the idea. As the adoption process progresses, the family experiences tension. As the name suggests, “the underwriting sign constantly fluctuates between negative and positive,” says the author. Has this happened in her own life, we ask her.

“Anything that interferes with the daily life of a family can lead to upheaval,” he replies. “Especially if it is a human presence with its own history and its own burden. This is what happened to us: we had our ups and downs, but also our share of miracles.”