ABSTRACT
Tension between fact and fiction is at the crux of any biographical novel. When I wrote Sister Teresa, based on the life of the sixteenth-century saint Teresa of Ávila, I conducted extensive research on her life and the minutiae of everyday life in sixteenth-century Spain. Yet, although biographical fiction must necessarily draw on fact, the author must sift through fact to ascertain what is relevant to the portrayal of a deeper dramatic truth. Rather than an accurate representation of their subject’s life, bio-novelists seek to convey the essence of the subject’s personality, which may require them to modify facts. Rather than feign objectivity, I invented an unabashedly opinionated narrative voice for Sister Teresa – an unreliable narrator named Sister Angélica.
