A SECRET FOR JULIA

In the manner of many mothers and their teenage daughters, Mercedes and Julia Beecham have reached an impasse in their fraught relationship. The cause of their estrangement is the titular secret, a truth that Mercedes guards fiercely, yet which history has made a commonplace: Mercedes, imprisoned as a dissident during Argentina's "dirty war," was raped by one of her captors and fled, pregnant, to London. Nearly 20 years later, she is still haunted by her past when her torturer reappears. Though structured as a mystery, this is a psychological coming-of-age tale that asserts the ways in which histories both political and personal well up through the seams of repression, and testifies to the redemptive power of bearing witness. Speaking the unspeakable, Mercedes finds that while her memories do not lose their horror, she is able to break from the language that her imprisonment taught, of "subterfuge" and "indifference," and to overcome the distanced stance evidenced by her measured prose. This novel, for which Sagastizábal won the prestigious Premio La Nación prize, provides a profound and beautiful examination of the continued effects of a period in Argentina's history best known for the 30,000 who "disappeared," whose mothers and grandmothers (the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo) refuse to forget. Sagastizábal provides a powerful, disturbing exploration of the era's effect on the next generation, whose family past is riddled with unanswered questions, and of the balance of memory, forgiveness and vindication made possible by and through the ever-powerful maternal bond. (Aug.)