 |
Born from an American mother and a Spanish father, Mari is a child during the Spanish Civil War. She can barely remember her mother, who grew sick in Madrid and went back to New York hoping for a cure. She lives with her extended family, where she is mostly ignored except for the attention and stories of her grandfather, Don Juan. When Franco’s forces march into Spain and attack Madrid, her family joins the other rebels to help defend it. Her grandfather helps organize the people and writes supportive texts to inspire them while her uncles join the fighting, and her father drives an ambulance. One day, Mari and three other children wander to the front lines and are hit by an artillery shell. This experience will haunt Mari all her life. Later, when most of her family flees Madrid as Franco’s forces win the war, she becomes enamored with Franco’s youth brigade and decides to join. This decision will impact her whole family.
Nieto does a wonderful job exploring this historical event through the lens of Mari. Her vivid language and sense of time and place compel the reader to live through the dark days of the Spanish Civil War. What is especially poignant is how adept Nieto is at examining this event through such a young character. Additionally, Nieto’s portrayal of Don Juan is a fine example of a charismatic, flawed, and noble human being. Despite a couple of overly complicated sentences and the book being about four sentences too long, this novel is easy to recommend to fiction lovers. Readers who love stories that dig into the very core of their characters and explore historical time periods will find this a fascinating read.
RECOMMENDED by the US Review