Four stories, spanning a period of over fifty years, complete the biographies of the two main characters in DEATH OF A NATIONALIST; Carlos Tejada Alonso y Leon, and Gonzalo Llorente."The Big Picture"New York, 1949: Since the death of his love and his dreams in Spain ten years earlier, Gonzalo Llorente has made sure that he cares for nothing. But among the flood of Puerto Rican immigrants to East Harlem, he finds two who threaten to shake him out of his apathy. A strong-willed girl and a needy child make him begin to wonder whether life is worth living, even away from Spain, and without his beloved Viviana."Hostages"Madrid, 1981: Carlos Tejada has spent the last five years living with his wife in quiet retirement, doting on his grandchildren, and shaking his head over the direction of the newly democratic Spain. His friendly political arguments with his oldest grandson take on a new urgency when members of his own Guardia Civil lead a coup d'etat that recalls...

Praise for Rebecca Pawel: "Pawel anchors a tense and exciting story with a terrific and complex plot."--Detroit Free Press "[Pawel] turns the clock back to 1939 and Madrid's tumultuous past. . . . An intriguing juxtaposition of the political and the personal."--Kirkus Reviews "An intriguing tale amid the gloom of war-torn Madrid. It is a humane and moving portrait of a divided people coming to grips with the virtues of enemies and the villainy of friends."--Dan Fesperman Madrid 1939. Carlos Tejada Alonso y León is a Sergeant in the Guardia Civil, a rank rare for a man not yet thirty, but Tejada is an unusual recruit. The bitter civil war between the Nationalists and the Republicans has interrupted his legal studies in Salamanca. Second son of a conservative Southern family of landowners, he is an enthusiast for the Catholic Franquista cause, a dedicated, and now triumphant, Nationalist. This war has drawn...