Leigh Bardugo's The Familiar Lives Up to Its Name: 'It's My Own Family's History' (Exclusive)

Leigh Bardugo has become a household name for her iconic Shadow and Bone trilogy, which spawned the Grishaverse and inspired a critically acclaimed Netflix series. But her newest book, The Familiar, hits a little closer to home than her past projects.

“I think when you're embarking on a novel, it's a good idea to embark on something that you know you can be passionate about,” Bardugo tells PEOPLE. “This was something I was passionate about learning about, because it's my own family's history.”

Bardugo’s own family, Sepphardic Jews, were expelled from Spain during the Inquisition in 1492, so she took inspiration from their story to craft her magic-tinged adult historical fiction. “It was thrilling in a lot of ways which I don't think every topic would have been,” she adds.

The Familiar, which is out now, follows Luzia Cotado, a scullion who uses a little magic to make her shabby life in the new capital of Madrid a little more bearable. But when her mistress discovers Luzia’s talents, she makes her use them to fuel the family’s social capital. Before long, Luzia attracts the attention of Antonio Pérez, the disgraced secretary to Spain's king. The king is desperate to gain a foothold against England’s heretic queen, and Pérez is angling for his favor too, at any costs.  

Luzia finds herself thrust into a world of seers and alchemists, holy men and hucksters, where the lines between magic, science and fraud often blurring together. As her profile grows, she worries her Jewish blood will draw the eye of the Inquisition. 

The author’s research process took her deep into the Inquisition, which took place over 300 years in Spain between 1478 and 1834. Along the way, she uncovered some unexpected details that helped the story take shape. 

“During the Renaissance, particularly in Spain, you were not supposed to grieve the dead. You're not supposed to wear black clothing, or rend garments, or cry, because that was to renounce the idea of resurrection,” she explains. “It was considered heretical and almost blasphemous to engage in that kind of grieving because life is supposed to be eternal if you're a good Catholic. And this was sort of a shock to me, because I'm used to the modern ways of grieving.”

Bardugo also realized that the lives of upper-class women were much more restrictive than those in the lower classes, or even their own servants. “There were cases where women would be so desperate for a look at the outside world, they would lean outside of their second story windows and they would sometimes fall and be horribly injured, or even die,” she says. “This is really showing me a kind of nuance in terms of what we consider freedom and what we consider access to to the outside world.”

That aspect of the book, Bardugo points out, may be more timely than intended. While she never sets out for a book to have a message before she starts, “because I think then you would put a sermon instead of a novel,” The Familiar does look at the experience of being a woman in that time period —especially one with some degree of power.

“I think we still see a sort of continuous cycle of intolerance and an inability to look beyond somebody's race or religion to see their humanity,” she says. “And I think that's something that resonates with a lot of people, because we now live in a time where to be public, to put art into the world, to put yourself into the world is also to risk a kind of persecution.”

Bardugo hopes that readers of all ages find something to love in The Familiar, especially the chance to escape into another world.  

“That's what drew me to historical fiction, to fantasy,” she says. “I was an awkward, uncomfortable kid, and I desperately needed to know there was more to life than what I was living day-to-day.” 

But there’s more to Bardugo’s books — and to the YA section as a whole — than a chance to get out of Dodge. “I think it's important to say that there is beautiful, complex storytelling happening in YA,” she says. “I think people are always eager to write it off in the same way that for many years they wrote off romance as a genre; people like to write off anything that women and girls are interested in to kind of undercut its cultural capital.”

The author says she “feels sorry for people who turn up their noses at the very idea of magic, whether that's romantic magic or magic spells.” She adds, “I've seen people reject horror. They reject fantasy. They reject science fiction. There's a sense that it's somehow beneath them.”

“But the truth is,” Bardugo continues, “these are genres that explore possibility and if you are willing to open that door, and you're willing to buy in with an author, then you may get to go to some different places and to have some different perspectives on our very real world than you might have otherwise.”

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The Familiar, from Flatiron Books, is out now, available wherever books are sold.