Río Muerto

Colombian writer Silva Romero makes his English-language debut with a wrenching tale of murder and survival. Near the remote Colombian town of Belen del Chami, a mute man named Salomon Palacios is gunned down by hooded assassins in 1992. His distraught widow, Hipolita, sets off on a rambling odyssey of retribution, accompanied by their sons Max, 12, and Segundo, eight. Salomon, meanwhile, has become a ghost, and he meets with the ghosts of other victims of political violence. Romero captures the intensity of the family’s grief, as they’re poorly consoled by a gravedigger and are ignored by the police, all while Salomon shadows them, unable to intervene. Silva Romero seamlessly weaves lyrical depictions of Salomon’s afterlife, a “dense, black, clammy, stinking jungle that looked to him like hell,” with pointed observations of the country’s decades-long guerrilla war, which “continues to break the extraordinary open hearts of thousands of Colombians.” Meadowcroft’s crystalline translation introduces readers to an important Latin American voice. (Feb.)