Rachel Miranda
Author Interview - Rachel Miranda
Author of Broken Chocolate
The Sandor family has always been close, gathering around the table for birthday breakfasts and Friday night dinners, drawn in by pastry chef Liv's inventive cooking and Sam's cautionary tales of his patients in the Yale Brain Injury department—reminders of how suddenly life can change. But when fifteen-year-old Zoey—popular, ambitious, and the bright center of the family—falls into a coma after a freak accident, their world fractures.
Her twin brother, Zev, must confront life without her protective shadow. Wrestling with social anxiety, he turns to his art to make sense of their abrupt separation, even as he privately navigates a budding romance with Zoey’s best friend. Sam faces an agonizing conflict of interest and a crisis of faith, haunted by the childhood losses that led him to medicine. And Liv, shaken from her steady calm, fights to hold her family together with apricot tarts, stubborn hope, and whatever strength she can gather.
Inspired by the patients, doctors, and caregivers the author encountered while managing a brain trauma clinic, Broken Chocolate moves us to consider what defines a meaningful life, when to honor old dreams, and when it’s time to build new ones.
Author Interview - Rachel Miranda
Author I draw inspiration from:
As an undergraduate, I wrote a 100-page thesis on music in the life and works of Thomas Mann. Throughout my reading and writing life, I have continued to love his precise use of words, his humor and insight, and his way of weaving observations about the state of the world into his stories with subtlety and thoughtfulness. I will always love "The Magic Mountain" best--perhaps because it takes place in Switzerland, where I was born--but also because of his genius literary device of putting all of his characters in a single, secluded setting where they must face the things they are trying to avoid and deal with each other in all of their humanness. My favorite contemporary author is Ann Patchett, whose work provided some of my deepest inspiration for writing fiction. I greatly admire her ability to draw complex characters and situations without descending into darkness, still maintaining a sense of hopefulness about the human experiment. I feel that she has a tenderness for even her most troublesome characters that I share--I love the people in my stories, and I think that tenderness allows for a very human and sympathetic approach to their situations. Two of my favorite Patchett books are "Run" and "Tom Lake." I was fascinated to learn, shortly after I read "Run" (one of her earlier works), that she, too, is a great admirer of Thomas Mann, and often sets her characters up much like he did in "The Magic Mountain," isolating them geographically or meteorologically, so that they are molded together and create a kind of unique alchemy for their particular situation. As it turned out, though it was largely unconscious at the time I was first writing, I ended up with much of "Broken Chocolate" in a similar setting.
Author Interview - Rachel Miranda | Author I Draw Inspiration From
Favorite place to read a book:
On a sunny porch, preferably in a cushioned rocker
Book character I’d like to be stuck in an elevator with:
Jo March of "Little Women." I think I've always wanted to meet her, even way before I knew I wanted to write fiction, because she just felt like someone I could be friends with. What's funny is that now that I'm older, I think of her more like my daughter, and I'd like to ask her how things are working out with her desire to "astonish" the world someday by doing something "splendid." Does that still matter to her? Has she realized that the things we do in our day-to-day lives are sometimes the most satisfying? Is it posterity she's thinking about? I have a lot of questions for her--but I don't know if she'll want to answer them!
Author Interview - Rachel Miranda | Book Character I’d Like to be Stuck in an Elevator With
The moment I knew I wanted to become an author:
I actually had a singular moment when my desire to write a novel hit me like a bolt of lightning. I was in my forties already, and while I'd always been a greedy reader, and I had lifelong creative pursuits (singing and songwriting from an early age, and then later a gourmet cooking practice), it had never occurred to me that I wanted to write books myself. But one day, I was in synagogue and a friend of mine stood up to give a talk about a book she was publishing. She had kept it completely to herself, so it was a real surprise to me, and the minute I heard her speaking, I had the most intense feelings of wonder and envy. It took me a little while to work out what my psyche was trying to tell me. I wanted to be a writer! So I, too, started out in total secrecy, stealing an hour a day between dropping off my four kids at school and managing my then-husband's medical practice for rehabilitating patients with brain traumas and other complicated neurological conditions. I was inspired daily by the way these patients and their caregivers approached their lives in the wake of their permanently altered trajectories--and that became the center of "Broken Chocolate."
Hardback, paperback, ebook or audiobook:
I reserve hardbacks for books that are really really special to me, that I know I want to keep forever. I love paperbacks for their portability and their colorful covers, and I have many favorites that I keep on my shelves. In the last few years, because I've struggled with my eyesight due to some medication side effects, I've often turned to e-books and audiobooks, both of which offer distinct advantages (I can magnify the font size on my e-reader, and I can cook or take a walk while I listen to an audiobook). But even then, if I really love a book, I'll still buy it and keep it on my shelf.
The last book I read:
"The Rest of Our Lives" by Ben Markovits. I liked it a lot, for its unassuming attempts at honestly working out the meaning and importance of his marriage in the scheme of his life--and for the way it highlights how easy it is to be in denial about serious illness. I found the protagonist very relatable and sometimes felt like I was just in the car with him on his road trip as he was working through these issues.
Author Interview - Rachel Miranda | The Last Book I Read
Pen & paper or computer:
I wish I could still write on paper with a pen, but unless it's to make a shopping list, I've been pretty much stuck with a screen for the last ten years, since I've had multiple surgeries on both thumbs and vaious fingers for injuries mostly caused by my Ehlers Danlos Syndrome. I find holding a pen for long periods quite difficult, so though I don't love screens and they come with their own issues, that's just where I am. And honestly, there is something reassuring about having all of my writings in one place and--with a lightweight laptop--being able to write anywhere, any time and knowing that it's all going into that little vault.
Book character I think I’d be best friends with:
Rocky (actually called Rachel like me) in Catherine Newman's "Sandwich" and "Wreck." I loved these two books about a woman caught in the sandwich generation who's trying to navigate her changing family dynamics as her kids grow up, leave, and return while she's also trying to care for her aging father. I'm sure Rocky and I would understand each other so well (though I went through that particular phase a few years ago), with our similar mixtures of anxiety and fierce love for our families. And grappling with mysterious illness (as Rocky does in "Wreck") is something I can deeply relate to, how it skews everything else in our lives and makes us question ourselves unnecessarily in all kinds of ways. Anyone who can reflect that "life is a near-death experience" and still maintain her sense of humor has got my vote!
Author Interview - Rachel Miranda | Book Character I’d be Best Friends With
If I weren’t an author, I’d be a:
Chef! I developed a pretty ambitious home cooking practice in my late thirties and forties, and though I could never bring myself to make the leap to professional cook, I have often fantasized about it, and I love to read chef's memoirs. In my novel, "Broken Chocolate," I made Liv, one of the main characters, a pastry chef, which gave me the chance to pour my love for cooking and baking into the narrative, too.
Favorite decade in fashion history:
The roaring twenties. I love the elegance of the lines, the gorgeous fabrics and dropped hems of the flapper dresses and the slick men's suits. Wouldn't it be a blast to go out on the town looking like that?
Place I’d most like to travel:
Portugal. It's an area of the Mediterranean that I've never explored but have always wanted to. I love the food, topography, flora, architecture, aesthetics, and weather of that region (everything, really!)--and we used to drive over the San Bernardino Pass from Switzerland into Italy regularly when I was a small child--but I've yet to explore Portugal at all, which I've heard wonderful things about. I feel like it's this little gem just waiting for me to discover it and I hope to be able to do that one day soon.
My signature drink:
I used to love a good margarita or mojito--I love those contrasting flavors, the acid, the sweetness, and the richness of the alcohol--but I haven't been drinking alcohol in the last few years, so my signature drink has become fresh pineapple juice mixed equally with seltzer. I never seem to get tired of it, and I find that the sweet, tart, and bubbly combo satisfies that festive sense I used to get with an alcoholic drink very well.
Favorite artist:
My daughter, Serena Faye Feingold, who is both a visual artist (painter, jeweler, ceramicist) and a singer/songwriter. I find that her aesthetic sensibility closely matches mine--everything she makes is beautiful, often inspired by a love of the sea, which I share--and I'm always moved when she sings.
Number one on my bucket list:
I dream of finding a way to buy a little house by the sea. I don't know what this would look like or how I would swing it, I just know that it's a dream I've been carrying around with me for a long time, and I don't ever want to give up on it. In an ideal world, it would be somewhere warm in winter--but easy to get to from the northeast US where I live--and unspoiled with touristy stuff or massive crowds. And there would be enough space to build on rooms for all my kids and their kids to visit as time goes on. How's that for a reach?
Anything else you'd like to add:
I've alluded in some of my answers to serious health issues in my own life and I wanted to explain a bit, because somehow my own story has crossed with the themes of "Broken Chocolate"--despite the fact that I first wrote the novel many years before I had an inkling of what I'd be facing. Five years ago, I was diagnosed with interstitial lung disease, which is a progresssive, incurable scarring of the lungs. I became increasingly ill over the course of the next four years until it was obvious that I would not make it without radical intervention. Then in May of 2025, I was incredibly lucky to receive a lung transplant that saved my life. While life post-transplant has its considerable challenges, I am deeply grateful that I am still here to see the publication of my debut novel and to enjoy all of the knotty messes that this life can throw my way. So, as you can see, I have found myself grappling directly with the question that the family in my novel grapples with, about how we redefine a meaningful life when the one we thought we were living goes off the rails, and how we build new dreams for the life we are given.
Find more from the author:
https://www.rachelmiranda.com/broken-chocolate
https://rachelmiranda.substack.com/
https://www.instagram.com/rachelmiranda66/
https://www.facebook.com/rachel.feingold.7
About Rachel Miranda:
Rachel Miranda
Rachel Miranda emigrated from Switzerland to America at the age of eight and currently lives in the greater New York area. She is the author of "The World at Our Table: A Euro-American Cookbook of Family Favorites," and writes a Substack series called Air Hunger. Her creative writing appears in online and print journals in the US and abroad. She earned a Master of Fine Arts in Writing and Literature from Bennington Writing Seminars and is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Translation Fellowship. "Broken Chocolate" (Vine Leaves Press, 2026) is her debut novel.
