the fountains of silence by ruta sepetys

Hope you’ve got your passport, because you’re about to go on one hell of a trip to Spain. This book is as much about life under Generalissimo Franco as it is about young love, bullfighting, swaggering Americans abroad, and family obligations. And just like any good mystery, there are twists and reveals down every alleyway and in every whispered secret. But rather than trying to solve a crime, you, reader, are tasked with uncovering what happened to the characters before the book began.

Though there’s no murder or heist, The Fountains of Silence plays out like a mystery. Through the stories of Ana, Daniel, and the many characters they encounter, Sepetys educated me about a point in modern history that has been largely ignored by popular media. I love historical fiction, particularly stories about World War II, but I’d never read anything about how that seismic event played out in Spain. There he meets Ana, a young maid who, along with her siblings, has struggled to make ends meet since her Republican parents were punished for their views. Here’s the Cliff’s Notes version: Daniel, a 19-year-old Spanish-American aspiring photographer, is staying with his wealthy parents at the Castellana Hilton (a real place!). That said, this time period wasn’t a particularly pleasant one-at least, not if you were Spanish. The entire time I was reading (which wasn’t long, since I flew through the 475-page novel in three days), I felt as if I, too, were walking the cobblestoned streets of Madrid, the heat of the late afternoon sun on my shoulders.

In Ruta Sepetys’s latest, The Fountains of Silence, I was taken to a sepia-toned summer in 1950s Spain. To another place, to another time, to a world I never could have experienced on my own.

The fountains of silence by ruta sepetys