Many Americans visiting Madrid in the 1950s found it to be a friendly, exotic place with great nightlife and cheap wine. But in her breathtaking work of historical fiction, The Fountains of Silence, Carnegie Medal-winning author Ruta Sepetys (Between Shades of Gray; Salt to the Sea; Out of the Easy) reveals the nefarious underside of Spain under the 36-year military dictatorship of Generalísimo Francisco Franco.
Like most tourists, 18-year-old Texan Daniel Matheson, visiting Madrid with his Spanish-born mother and oil executive father during the summer of 1957, has no idea about the many secrets Spaniards are keeping under Franco. Freedom of religion isn't tolerated. Regional diversity, including culture, language or dialect, is forbidden. And hundreds of thousands of babies are mysteriously disappearing. Spaniards like hotel maid Ana, her gravedigger brother, Rafa, and their cousin Puri, an orphanage worker, are "shackled by poverty and silence." Rafa and Ana, whose parents were killed for being Spanish Republicans and therefore perceived to be part of the resistance, "long for truth and justice." Puri has bought into the doctrine of Franco's Spain, believing her ultimate destiny is service and motherhood. Still, all yearn for something more.
An aspiring photojournalist, Daniel hopes to capture the stories of Spanish people in photographs, but the authorities in Spain are telling only one story, and anyone who speaks another truth will be silenced. As Daniel grows closer to Ana and her family, he begins to understand what everyone in Madrid knows: "This is Franco's Spain. They're all hiding something." Sepetys weaves together the young people's perspectives in this stunning novel (which includes photos, oral history commentary, glossary and notes), giving readers an up-close and personal view of a chilling time in Spain's history. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor