Winter 2026

Like most children in the Southwest, Linda Chavez grew up with a straightforward, undramatic family story about her roots: Her dad’s ancestors had moved from Spain to Mexico in the late 16th century, then north to what is today New Mexico, while her mother’s family arrived from the British Isles. It seemed a standard American tale about immigrants seeking opportunity.

Or so Chavez thought during her steady rise as one of the most prominent Hispanic women in the country.

Then, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., invited her to be a guest on his PBS show Finding Your Roots and she discovered that her background was anything but undramatic: Her forebears weren’t seeking opportunity; they were fleeing persecution because her 11th great-grandmother was one of the thousands of Spanish Jews forced to convert by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella . . . and wound up investigated by the Inquisition for maintaining her faith in secret.

In her new book, The Silver Candlesticks, Chavez explores this reality by imagining the experiences of a young woman like her 11th great-grandmother who discovers her family’s hidden Jewish identity just as the Spanish Inquisition was tightening its grip. What unfolds is a reckoning faced by many Spanish Jews: a daughter guarding an inheritance of faith, a wife choosing love over fear, a mother weighing survival against truth.

She will be in conversation with Rick Salomon, Senior Fellow at the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights and cofounder of the Illinois Holocaust Museum, to probe religious identity under pressure, the machinery of repression and how histories of forced conversion echo in today’s debates over immigration and rising authoritarianism.

Former White House Director of Public Liaison and longstanding Hispanic leader, Linda Chavez was the highest-ranking woman in President Reagan’s White House; in 2001 she became the first Latina nominated to the cabinet; and in 2000 the Library of Congress named her a Living Legend. The Silver Candlesticks is her debut novel. She is the author of three previous nonfiction books.