A tale of half-siblings becomes a novel
At 57, Erika Yost discovered she had a half-brother. Her friend turned their story into a book
When musician Erika Yost called children’s writer and family friend Eric Walters to say she had a story he might find interesting, he had no idea it would lead to his latest middle-grade novel.
It didn’t take long for him to realize how interesting Yost’s story really was.
In September 2019, at the age of 57, Yost received an unsolicited direct message over social media from a 33-year-old named Bryan Fontez. Also a musician, Fontez had studied classical voice in high school before going on to play piano and drums, and joining the Canadian rock band Last Bullet.
But it was the final revelation in Fontez’s note that knocked Yost back on her heels: he claimed to be her biological half-brother, born from donated sperm provided by Yost’s father.
“That’s more than an interesting story,” Walters told Yost. “That’s a novel.”
This spring, the prolific author of more than 130 children’s novels, picture books and non-fiction for kids published “The Club,” about two 13-year-olds, Jax and Liv, who discover they share a donor father.
Walters’ protagonists are also musicians; trumpet players, to be precise. And while Walters insists his characters are “very different people” from Yost and Fontez, he clearly found the musical element of the story valuable.
As, it appears, did Yost and Fontez. “It’s not just that we’re musicians,” Yost said. “It’s that we both play multiple instruments and do multiple styles. Right now my main practice during the day is jazz piano.”
There was enough commonality to make Fontez, who first discovered his connection with Yost through an online DNA test, want to reach out to her directly.
“I saw she was a composer and choir conductor and professional singer and pianist. My jaw was on the floor because I had spent the last 10 years of my life in a band and writing and composing and playing piano and singing.”
When Jax and Liv first meet in the novel, they feel an instant connection; as the narrative develops, and they discover more shared affinities and interests,
they naturally become curious about each other’s respective backgrounds. This curiosity, too, mirrors the reactions of Yost and Fontez to their newly revealed familial bonds.
“My mother told me (about being a donor child) when I was about14 years old. We were having an argument and she kind of blurted it out,” Fontez said. “I was just instantly curious.”
For her part, Yost was aware that her father began a series of sperm donations in the 1980s after separating from Yost’s mother, so she was aware of the potential for multiple half-siblings.
Here, too, her connection to Fontez has proved valuable, since he has undertaken extensive online detective work to try to locate his possible siblings, all of whom he’s met except for one.
“I do kind of feel a little responsibility to be the DNA arbiter of the family,” he said.
Fontez’s use of the word “family” is telling. The question of how to define family is one that both Fontez and Yost have had to reckon with since uncovering their extended sibling bonds.
“I’ve had friends and family that I’ve told this story to and some of them don’t jibe with it,” he said. “I
do feel a connection (with my half-siblings) and I see the similarities, and it means something to me. But ultimately there’s no disrespect to the father who raised me. He’s my dad.”
Yost is similarly attuned to the dynamics that diverge from the traditional biological family. “I was the oldest child in my family and the only biological child; my parents adopted my younger brother and sister,” she said. “So I have people that I didn’t grow up with who are actually more biologically related to me than people I did grow up with.”
Ultimately, these questions were part of the thematic weave that interested Walters in writing “The Club.”
“Different doesn’t mean wrong. Different doesn’t mean better or worse,” he said. “It just means different. Family is family and you define it the way you want to define it.”