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[Zulema Estabrooks]

Thisis FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Leigh Bardugo is one of today's most successful and popular authors working in the fantasy genre, writing books for both the adult and YA markets. She became famous for her "Shadow And Bone" novels, which took place in a world inspired by 19th century Russia. They were adapted into a series for Netflix. Her latest novel, "The Familiar," takes place in 16th century Spain. Bardugo spoke with our producer Sam Briger. Here's Sam.

SAM BRIGER, BYLINE: The heroine of "The Familiar" is Luzia, a young woman with little prospects, working in the kitchen of a not very important noble and his wife in Madrid. However, Luzia has a secret. She's able to perform small miracles. Like when the cook burns the bread, she's able to unburn it. Her secret is discovered by her employer, the haughty woman of the house, Dona Valentina, who imagines she will be able to rise in society having such a woman working for her.

But the story of Luzia's parlor trick-like miracles travels fast, and members of King Philip II's court take notice. Perhaps, they think, she can serve a larger purpose in the pursuits of Spain's empire. But first, she must prove her magical skills in a contest with other miracle workers, some of whom may be hucksters, some might be real. And in a society policed by the inquisition, she must prove that her abilities are the products of God's blessings and not the work of the devil, which would surely be the conclusion if it's revealed that she is of Jewish descent, that she is one of the conversos, the Jews that in 1492, when faced with exile from Spain, converted to Catholicism to remain. Luzia faces mortal traps everywhere as she tries to find a place for herself in the oppressive world she's been born into and as she discovers love.

Leigh Bardugo is well-known for her YA books in the "Shadow And Bone" and "Six Of Crow" series, as well as her adult books "Ninth House" and "Hell Bent," which take place on a version of Yale's campus where she went to school, where magic is used to maintain the power and privilege of the school's secret societies like Skull & Bones. Leigh Bardugo, welcome to FRESH AIR.

BRIGER: I'd like to start, if you're willing, with a reading from the new book, "The Familiar." This is after Dona Valentina thinks that something is up because she came into the kitchen, saw there was some burnt bread. She got very angry, yelled at the cook. And then when she comes back, the bread is no longer burnt. She thinks maybe someone's pulling a trick on her, but she's not sure what's going on. And we're going to hear from Luzia's point of view here.

BARDUGO: (Reading) When Luzia had seen the burnt bread, she hadn't thought much about passing her hand over it and singing the words her aunt had taught her, aboltar kazal, aboltar mazal - a change of scene, a change of fortune. She sang them very softly. They were not quite Spanish, just as Luzia was not quite Spanish. But Dona Valentina would never have her in this house, even in the dark, hot, windowless kitchen if she detected a whiff of Jew. Luzia knew that she should be careful. But it was difficult not to do something the easy way when everything else was so hard. She slept every night on the cellar floor on a roll of rags she'd sewn together, a sack of flour for her pillow. She woke before dawn and went out into the cold alley to relieve herself, then returned and stoked the fire before walking to the Plaza del Arrabal to fetch water from the fountain, where she saw other scullions and washer women and wives, said her good mornings, then filled her buckets and balanced them on her shoulders to make the trip back to Calle de Dos Santos. She set the water to boil, picked the bugs out of the millit and began the day's bread if Agueda hadn't yet seen to it.

It was the cook's job to visit the market, but since her son had fallen in love with that dashing lady playwright, it was Luzia who took the little pouch of money and walked the stalls, trying to find the best price for lamb and heads of garlic and hazelnuts. She was bad at haggling, so sometimes on the way back to Casa Ordono, if she found herself alone on an empty street, she would give her basket a shake and sing onde iras, amigos toparas - wherever you go, may you find friends. And where there had been six eggs, there would be a dozen.

BRIGER: Thanks so much for reading that. So Luzia uses this magic that she has to unburn bread and to do small, little tasks, sort of makes her life easier. Eventually, she's discovered by her employer in which that will completely alter her life. But let's talk a little bit about these miracles. Like, She recites these proverbs called refranes. Is that how you would say it?

BARDUGO: Yeah. Ladino is also - it goes by a lot of different names. It's sometimes called Judeo Spanish. Its origins were in the Jewish population of Spain, and it was a combination of a very old form of Castilian and Hebrew. And when the Jews were expelled in 1492, that language went with them. And it combined with the languages of the countries they found refuge in. So you will find Ladino containing words in French, in Greek, in Turkish, because that was what diaspora was doing to this particular kind of speaking. And the idea of these refranes is that they are one of the few ways that this language that has nearly died out in the world continues to be spoken to this day. They are the things that are passed down from people's grandparents and great-grandparents. And for me, they were a way of connecting Luzia to her people in exile.

BARDUGO: Yeah. There was - I had only a small amount of contact with my grandmother on my Sephardic side, but there was this little rhyme - quien no risica, no rosica that rattled around in my head for many years without really even knowing what it meant. And it was only when I was around 10 years old, 11 years old, that I walked into a Spanish class, and my teacher, Senor Beigl (ph) said, you know, your last name is Spanish. It means executioner. And that was a thrilling thing to discover as a budding young goth. But it was also my entry into connecting to this culture that I didn't know very well at the time.

BRIGER: So Luzia is a converso. She comes from a Jewish family that decided to convert to Christianity in Spain in 1492, when Jews were faced with this terrible choice of either exile or conversion. But the people that decided to stay, like, you make it very clear in the book that, even if you did convert, this was not, like, a get-out-of-jail-free card. Like, conversos...

BARDUGO: No. The birth of conversos is also the birth of the Inquisition. And there's a lot of theory about why the Inquisition had such power in Spain. And one theory is that, well, Jews who became conversos now weren't bound by many of the restrictions that existed for Jews. So now they could do business with their fellow Christians - viejos - old Christians, and they could marry and they could live outside of these neighborhoods they'd been confined to. And so there was anxiety associated with that. But there was also real anxiety that I think sometimes as modern people, it's hard for us to get our heads around. There was real anxiety that false converts - if these people were actually practicing Judaism, or in the case of Muslim converts, practicing Islam, in secret, that they were endangering the soul of Spain and that it was the responsibility of the church and the crown to rid Spain of this danger.

BARDUGO: Yes. My family left Spain and went to Morocco - on my grandmother's side, to Egypt. And we know that there were some relatives who did remain, but they converted. And once you had converted, to have any contact with Jews or Judaism, was to put yourself in the crosshairs of the Inquisition. And so that branch of the family tree withers and dies. It vanishes. And this book was a way of reimagining it into existence.

BRIGER: So, Luzia is smart. She's quick-witted. She's ambitious. She wants to see the world, and she says she wants to have opinions about it. She wants to stay up all night and argue. But a real-life Luzia in 16th century Spain would most likely not be able to live the life that she wants. Was that depressing for you to think about?

BARDUGO: (Laughter) Well, I think there are always ways we find our lives constrained. And I think that something that probably resonates with a lot of people is never really having the opportunity to show what you can do, to do your best, to have your talent mentored or discovered. And I think that that is still something that is with us in the modern world, probably particularly for women. So yes, it's depressing, but I think one of the joys of fiction is then finding ways to let your heroes and heroines gain access to power that they might not have had access to in the real world. And there are always exceptions in history. When I was working with one of the historians who helped me to make sure that the book was correct and authentic to the period, he said, look, I deal in generalities. History deals in generalities. There are always exceptions. And that was sort of a guiding touchstone for me.

BARDUGO: I think I have a very popcorn sensibility when it comes to stories. I tend to begin with a kind of fun proposition for a tale, right? Look, here's a girl who can work miracles during a time when miracles and magic were under such close scrutiny. With "Six Of Crows," it was, I'm going to write a fantastical heist. It's "Ocean's Eleven" meets "Game Of Thrones." With "Ninth House," it was, well, wouldn't it be fun if these societies wielded this kind of magical influence. But when you're telling a story honestly and thoroughly, It tends to get a little heavier than maybe the popcorn version. And when it comes to my characters, they begin as archetypes in the sense that Luzia is a kind of Cinderella figure. Valentina is her shrewish employer. But they end up being very different people as we get to know them in the same way that hopefully the people you encounter in your lives become more interesting and reveal themselves and surprise you as you get to know them too.

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