I'm Natalie Moore. I fell in love with soap operas when I was just five years old, and I still

watch them. Their television's longest scripted series and have zero reruns. Now let me tell you,

soap operas aren't just some silly art form. They are significant. In this season of making,

Stories Without End from WBEZ Chicago, join me as I share how the genre

began, their social impact, and why these stories endure. Listen, wherever you get your podcast.

From WBEZ Chicago, I'm Greta Johnson, and this is the Nerdat Book Club.

It's just like a regular book club, except sometimes the author stops by.

It is a whole new year, and our book selection for January is Olga Dyes Dreaming by Sochiel Gonzalez.

It's about Olga, a wedding planner in Brooklyn.

She's super successful.

She is great at dealing with super entitled rich people,

but she's not really sure how she ended up doing what she's doing. This book kind of has everything.

It's got rich people drama and political scandal and corrupt business schemes and a mom on

the run who's still somehow super naggy and a super douchey white guy named Dick. So

Chil is here to tell us all about it. So chill, welcome to internet. Thank you so much. And I

sort of loved that summary. I was like, I should, I wasted a year with a bad elevator pitch.

And I could have been saying that. I don't know. I mean, I just thought it was like kind of the perfect balance of like salacious, but still substantive. You know what I mean? Yeah, no, totally. I appreciate it. And I, you know what? I just loved, I always love kind of juicy big books. So it was kind of fun to just get the chance to write one. And yeah, yeah. So it was like, I was like,

are people going to go with this? And so far, I feel like people are mainly going with it. So it's

kind of there's like, we're going to take a crazy turn. But like a lot of it mainly inspired by

real events, real life. So I think maybe that's what grounds it in like letting you go with it. So yeah, you mentioned real events.

I mean, kind of an anchor, I think, in the story is Hurricane Maria. Yes. But you mentioned like,

I don't know, Olga is born in Brooklyn, as I mentioned. She's raised by her grandparents. She went to an Ivy League

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