R.J. Palacio
1 book analyzed
Biography
R.J. Palacio (Raquel Jaramillo Palacio, born 1963) is a graphic designer and art director who spent twenty years in book publishing before writing Wonder as her debut novel at 48. The book grew directly from a specific incident: Palacio was at an ice cream shop with her two young sons when one of them spotted a child with a severe craniofacial difference and began to cry. Palacio's instinct was to leave the situation before it became worse — to protect both her son and, she hoped, the other child from further distress. She pulled her sons away, got them in the car, and drove off. As she drove, she heard the Natalie Merchant song 'Wonder' on the radio — 'I had no right to be so blessed' — and was overwhelmed by the feeling that she had done the wrong thing. She had chosen avoidance over engagement, protection over connection. She went home and began writing Wonder, asking herself what would have happened if she had stayed. The child she invented to answer that question was Auggie Pullman. The novel is, among other things, Palacio's own reckoning with the impulse to look away.