Author Benjamin Alire Sáenz Has Died at 71: Read His Last Author’s Note About Losing His Niece to Gun Violence (Exclusive)

Lizz SchumerWed, July 29, 2026 at 2:31 PM UTC

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Benjamin Alire Saenz and ‘When the World Was Happy’Credit: Vantage Point Studios; Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

Legendary author Benjamin Alire Sáenz, best known for Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, died July 28 at 71 after a long illness.

His publisher, Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers confirmed the news on July 29. The multi-award winning novelist’s last book, When the World Was Happy, comes out on Sept. 29 and started with a deeply personal story. It centers around twins CheChe and Emma who survive a school shooting, but suffer devastating losses.

“CheChe loses a leg, and both he and Emma have friends who die. Suddenly, the world feels like a very different place,” the publisher’s official synopsis reads. “But what they find hasn’t changed — or has only gotten deeper — is their love for their family, their close friends and one another, and as they begin to heal, they create their own little community, one that wields the power of humor, kindness and hope.”

Below, read Sáenz’s final author letter about how the story came to him.

‘When the World Was Happy’Credit: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

I’ve always believed that I don’t choose the books that I write. They choose me.

My work has always been a poetry of witness. Even my fiction novels are responses to the times I lived in and the life I have lived.

Feb. 10, 1990, was a Saturday. I was 35 years old and studying at Stanford University as a Stegner Fellow. My roommate, Larry, and I had ridden our bicycles back to our apartment after an early lunch. It was a beautiful, sunny day. Once we were home, I noticed a message on our answering machine from my brother-in-law.

When I called him back, he told me that Amy, our 13-year-old niece, had been killed in Las Cruces, New Mexico, my hometown. I don’t remember this, but Larry said I started yelling into the phone, calling my brother-in-law a liar. My older sister, Linda, got on the phone and said quietly, “Ben, try to calm down. They’ve killed our Amy.” I both remember and don’t remember hearing those words. I have no memory of the rest of our conversation.

Larry called our good friend Rose, a fellow poet who was always a take-charge kind of woman. She and Larry helped buy me a plane ticket to go home the next morning. They stayed with me the rest of that day, which is mostly blank in my memory. I only remember drinking too much and feeling absolutely stunned.

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I vaguely remember getting on a plane. I do remember opening a copy of the San Jose Mercury News and reading a story about what had happened.

“Robbers forced seven people into a bowling alley office Saturday and shot an employee, his two young daughters, and another girl to death before setting a fire to try to cover up the crime.”

The employee was a 26-year-old mechanic, who’d gone to work that morning with his two daughters, ages six and two. Amy was the other girl. Her dad’s girlfriend managed the bowling alley, and she often went there while her mother, my younger sister Gloria, worked at a bakery.

The two gunmen shot a total of seven people that day; three survived with critical injuries. They stole an estimated $5,000 dollars before setting the office on fire and fleeing. One of the survivors, a 12-year-old girl, managed to drag herself to a phone and call 911. The shooters have never been caught and the crime, 36 years later, remains unsolved.

When I was at Stanford, homecomings were always joyous. Not so on Feb. 11, 1990. I dreaded arriving home. And I was sad beyond words.

My flight landed in El Paso, Texas, where my friend Barbara picked me up at the airport. I don’t remember the 45-minute drive to Las Cruces.

Memories from this day come back to me all the time, even though I wasn’t present for all of them. Holding my sister and my mom. Hearing their sobs.

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My two brothers, Jaime and Pollo, are real working-class guys. They’re not big talkers. They couldn’t decide who would tell my mom that her granddaughter had been shot. As my mom sat in her chair reading, the way she always did, they argued: You tell her. No, you tell her. You tell her. No, you tell her. I don’t know who ended up with the grim task.

My father, who was not good at expressing affection, worshipped Amy. It was beautiful to watch them because you saw the kind of love that my father was capable of. On the day of the shooting, the hospital gathered the victims’ family members into a conference room. All of my family members had been there. When a hospital spokesman came in with the news that Amy had not survived, my father stood up and yanked all the photographs in the room off the wall and smashed them to the ground.

In that period between all the condolences and all the food, I tried to pull my thoughts together to write my niece’s eulogy. I don’t remember a word of it. What I do remember was a church full of mourners. Family, friends, neighbors, people who cared. A thousand people filled the pews at Immaculate Heart of Mary Cathedral.

At the cemetery, I remember a photographer pushing me out of the way to take a picture of my sister Gloria while her daughter’s casket was being lowered into the ground. That picture ended up in a lot of newspapers around the country.

Amy was the only grandchild in our family for the first seven years of her life. For us, she was the center of the universe. I made her a T-shirt that said “Uncle Ben’s Princess.” I used to take her to the movies. She would sit on my lap and tell me, “I love you, Uncle Ben.” I would respond, “I adore you.”

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Our nickname for Amy was Cocoliso, the Spanish name for Swee’Pea, the baby character in the Popeye cartoons.

As a young teen, Amy loved the clothing brand Guess. When I was back in California, after Amy’s funeral, I remember getting a haircut at the Stanford Mall and walking past a Guess store. I went in and bought Amy a T-shirt. Not until I was back outside about to get on my bicycle did it hit me: She’s not here anymore. I slumped onto the sidewalk and wept. I just fell apart.

In the months after her daughter’s murder, my sister Gloria, a friendly woman with an easy laugh, seemed to have disappeared. Gone was her sense of humor. Gone was her love for life. Then, on the second Christmas after Amy’s death, I was sitting in my parents’ living room watching television with my father. Everyone else was in the kitchen making tamales. I remember thinking, I will never hear my sister laugh again. And all of a sudden, for the first time since Amy’s passing, there it was. My sister’s laugh.

I cried.

Benjamin Alire SaenzCredit: Vantage Point Studios

I remember saying to myself, She’s back. My sister Gloria is back! Yes, it’s true life goes on, at least for the living. But there is never getting over such a tragedy. The days go on, the event grows distant — but there is no forgetting.

We have created a nation of people who grieve the loss of their children.

Reading about the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in 2022 threw me right back into my family’s tragedy and my own trauma. That was when I decided that this was not gonna leave me alone until I wrote about it. I wanted to write a book about how people survive and live through something as senseless as this. I needed to write that book for my family, in memory of Amy, and in solidarity with all the people who have lost their children to violence.

We’ll ban a book in a millisecond, but we won’t ban a gun. What is wrong with us? I wish I didn’t live in a world where books like this have to be written. But I do live in this world and I’m not going to run away from my responsibilities.

I want to write about things that matter. I want to write to move people. Writing taught me to love people. So writing this book is how I love.

Used by permission of Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. All rights reserved.

When the World Was Happy will come out Sept. 29 and is available now for preorder, wherever books are sold.

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