As she waited, her mind drifted back to the time she’d spent getting into college, about how she’d use every waking hour studying hard to catch up with her better-educated peers, about how she had willed herself into one of the most prestigious universities in her country.  Had she listened to those all around her, the only thing she would have had to look forward to was working in that dreadful factory close to her home, or be worse off by becoming an un-wed baby factory herself, such was the fate of many of her girlfriends before they even left high school.  She was determined to get out of that cycle of poverty in the only way she knew how: study hard, get into university…….never look back.  She knew if she could get in somewhere, anywhere, she could change her life; she would then be in control of her own destiny.
……...........before being adopted, life without any medical support had left her vulnerable to a number of childhood diseases, one of which left her face riddled with pock-marks.  Whereas her more photogenic cohorts were eagerly snapped up and whisked away to happier lives by proud new parents, she was always left behind, to ponder on her deficiencies.  As she matured, she had all but grown out of the most disfiguring, and most distracting, scars but it took all her will-power to overcome almost 2 decades of extreme self-consciousness.  Will power or not, the limitations of her social life at high school, college and graduate school had left her with a particularly unique insight into the world of arbitrary cruelty
She was raised in a large industrial city in Central America and her extended family all came from laborers or factory workers, so getting admitted to university was an astonishing feat, given that she had practically taught herself everything.  She had struggled with Chemistry and Math but had gotten lucky when 2 new teachers arrived 6 months before her entrance exams and gave her new ways to look at the problems she could not solve on her own.  Deep down she always knew she wanted to leave for someplace better, so this stroke of luck combined with her will to succeed was hopefully the catalyst that would bring her the kind of changes for which she longed.
“You grow up with your friends at high school, you witness random viciousness in the schoolyard at least once a week, see fellow students drop out from the system altogether only to end up on drugs or in crime, and you hear that a classmate of 13, 14 or 15 years of age has made her own mother a grandmother before her 32nd birthday.  Every family you knew had someone unemployed in the house, some families had 3 generations, grandparents, parents and kids, all on welfare.  You know full well all your friends hated school, the neighborhood, everything.  All people would say is ‘I can’t wait to get out of here’ and then when one of them actually succeeds all they do is shout traitor or shun you when you go back home.”
Tamaria
Keswick
Bridget
Desai
Callie
Piaz
Angela
Sun
Convergence Main Characters
She had been through college on a basketball scholarship [and] pursued a double-major, communications and politics, at a prestigious university in Alabama.  Although she was proud of her roots and often went back, she knew she wanted to work for the best that New York could provide, and she’d been such a successful student that, by the time she graduated, offers from the city’s finest News outlets were not in short supply.  She’d been aggressive in pursuing all her stories as a reporter and very quickly got promotion after promotion for bringing her newspaper major political breakthroughs on a regular basis.  She’d gotten a well-deserved reputation for being relentless but fair, brutally honest but balanced, and her leads were always so well researched that everyone trusted her representation of the facts.  She’d had the newspaper world at her feet for several years now………
The Reporter
The Narrator can be seen as a single individual or the collective voice of many.  He can be seen as an actual person or as a metaphor, whose words are the echoes of a thousand people whispering in the dark, unable to say or not wanting to say what is really on their minds.  He’s presented as an established scientist in academia because that’s the best place from which he can carry the narrative, but he can be anyone you want him to be or be nothing more than the vehicle that drives each of the stories forward.  However, once you’ve finished the book you’ll know in your heart what he represents to you. 
The Narrator
Readers may wonder why the author has left the characters below without names, as there are many who would be critical of this violation of literary style, but the choice is quite deliberate and the reason is revealed as the book progresses.