She found herself describing the masks worn during the 1918 flu pandemic and the discrimination faced by her own family and other immigrants. “One day when I was writing, I literally typed 2019 instead of 1919,” Zuravleff said. “I just sat at my computer, stunned. I thought, ‘Okay, this is then, and this is now.’”

In a recent interview, Zuravleff, a longtime D.C. resident whose previous novel, “Man Alive!”, was a Washington Post Notable Book, talked about how “American Ending,” told in the voice of a young girl proud to be the first American in her family, explores the paradoxes — historical and contemporary — inherent in being American.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

How much did the story you knew growing up — that your paternal grandmother lost her American citizenship when she married because your grandfather wasn’t a citizen — inspire “American Ending?”

That made the novel vital. I’d heard the refrain my whole life, and it didn’t mean anything to me. And then one day I look at the 1920 census. It says she’s born in Erie, Pa., yet she is marked as “Alien.” I was stunned. “Alien” is a strong word, and there’s something about seeing it in writing that infuriates you.

Americans teach a more flattering history than what transpired. After the Civil War, did African Americans get citizenship? What about Indigenous Americans? What about Chinese Americans? It’s not pretty, and it’s not what we think it is.

Is Yelena, the protagonist, one of your grandmothers?

I’m named after my two grandmothers, Mary and Kay. My character Yelena is this mash-up of my mom’s mom, Kay; my own mom; and me. My mom’s mom was very canny. She marched into the foreman’s office and demanded that my grandfather be paid in cash instead of scrip, like Yelena’s mother in the novel. That is gutsy.

Yelena’s smart, wryly observant voice pulls us through the novel. Did she speak to you immediately?

Yes. Readers of early drafts said the novel should be told in third person, and I kept saying it has to be first person because the book’s message is: I am here. You don’t see me, but I am right here and I belong here.

Yet we see her rebelliousness only through her (very funny) internal monologue. She can’t really rebel — or can she?

Yelena is doing every single thing she is asked. She loves school, but she has to leave fourth grade to take care of her sister’s babies. So she’s sassing her father in her head, but she would never say the things she thinks out loud. My challenge was not to put a 21st-century spin on her, because family, history and religion are tying her hands at every turn. From where we sit, we see so much possibility for agency that she does not have. And so, is she going to be beaten down or is she going to find a way?

Did you have a different audience in mind when writing this book?

I don’t know who I’m writing for, but this book is dedicated to my mother. She read many drafts, and she was an editor, so she read some of them for proofreading purposes. So when the book was done and she chose to read it again, for pleasure, she said: “I’m not Yelena, but she has all my thoughts.” There’s an audience.

This is your fourth novel. Why haven’t you explored this history sooner?

I’ve been hearing these stories my whole life, but the impetus that I grew up with was to push that aside — to be American. When you come from illiterate poverty-stricken stock, you’re not necessarily raised to be proud of that, to want to tell that story and spread it around.

And yet I keep meeting people who are being told the story of their family at someone’s deathbed. Their relatives could take that secret to the grave, but before they die, they want to tell their story. So there’s both pride and shame in it. That makes for a good novel: pride and shame.

A few generations later, you’re publishing your fourth novel — your grandmothers would have been astonished. Isn’t that the American ending we mythologize?

Oh, I love that. And I had a lot of choices that they did not have. To study writing was anathema to my parents — and I thought, ‘I’ll be all right.’ That’s a luxury, a privilege.

Many communities of color are blocked from seeing the same type of progress across generations. Was that something you were thinking about, too?

Yes. My God, I’m from Oklahoma, and the Black community in Tulsa was firebombed — it was an affluent, educated, self-sustaining community in the ’20s and it was destroyed. So when I put this story out there, I am not saying we’ve had a tough time, too. I’m saying, ‘Here’s another instance where we have not done right by the people who have come here. What can we do differently?’

Yelena’s mother has her children choose the endings of their bedtime stories each night: a Russian ending (such as wolf eating a bride) or an American ending (the bridegroom cutting open the wolf’s stomach to release the happy bride). Which did you choose for the readers of “American Ending?”

Neither. Yelena is determined to discover a new American ending.