Reyna Grande wants her new novel to help us rethink the term 'invasion'

"The Ballad of Love and Glory" is a novel Reyna Grande never planned to write.

After a reading in 2013, an audience member had approached Grande with a book idea: "Have you heard about the St. Patrick's Battalion?"

Grande brushed it off. "Sometimes at events, people come up to me to talk and they tell me, 'You should write a book about this, you should write a book about that,'" she said. "It often happens to writers, and this was the same thing."

But the conversation piqued Grande's curiosity. Back home, she turned to Google and learned that the battalion was a military unit of mostly Irish immigrants who enlisted in the U.S. Army, only to desert and fight with Mexico during the Mexican-American War. Their leader was named John Riley.

The more she learned, the more fascinated she became, and Grande says she spent seven years researching and writing the story. The bestselling author of "" and "A Dream Called Home," Grande will join the on March 29 for a virtual conversation