The Blue Line

Betancourt, the Colombian politician held hostage for six years by FARC terrorists (the subject of her memoir Even Silence Has an End), attempts in her first novel to set a personal story of love, loyalty, and sacrifice against the backdrop of brutal repression during Argentina’s Dirty War of the 1970s and ’80s. Her protagonist, Julia, who has inherited the gift of foretelling the future from her grandmother, grows up in an increasingly oppressive Buenos Aires as her country witnesses the second coming of former general and soon-to-be dictator Juan Peron. She becomes active among revolutionaries who initially welcome Peron’s return, one of whom, Theodoro d’Uccello, she takes as her lover. Together they become increasingly radicalized, but Julia continues to have disturbing visions and is devastated when she fails to warn an activist priest in time to save him from being gunned down by a military assassin. Both Julia and Theo are eventually captured by death squads, but not before they conceive a child, who quite unbelievably survives Julia’s torture and imprisonment. The couple is separated while attempting to escape, and for years Julia, while raising their son, Ulysses, searches for news of Theo. The author’s narrative jumps back and forth across time, but the convoluted switches create confusion rather than depth, despite the fact that the chapters describing Julia’s capture, torture, and the camaraderie among prisoners ring frighteningly true. [em](Jan.) [/em]