Vannah Sterling had always been a collector of stories. As a child she would sit on the cracked porch of her grandmother’s house in East Los Angeles, listening to the soft cadence of Spanish lullabies that wrapped around the night like a warm blanket. Her grandmother, Doña Marta, called her “mi niña de fuego” – my fire‑child – because Vannah’s eyes seemed to hold a spark that refused to be dimmed.