Demasiados Héroes / Too Many Heroes - by Laura Restrepo (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

«Restrepo retrata magistralmente la danza feroz entre una madre desesperada por proteger a su hijo y un hijo desesperado por manifestar su propia fuerza». -- Carolina de Robertis, San Francisco Chronicle

Mateo y su madre Lorenza están acostumbrados a tenerse solo el uno al otro. El chico creció en ausencia de su padre, Ramón, con quien la madre había compartido una intensa aunque invisible vida de clandestinidad como militantes de la oposición a la dictadura militar en Argentina. Pero ahora Mateo es un adolescente atormentado por una pregunta punzante que no halla respuesta en los recuerdos de la madre, marcados por el compromiso político: ¿y si mi padre era una especie de héroe, por qué nunca quiso saber de mí? Madre e hijo emprenderán un viaje en busca de ese padre perdido, y tendrán que enfrentarse a la revelación de un brutal secreto al que van a referirse como «el episodio oscuro».

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

"Restrepo masterfully portrays the fierce dance between a mother desperate to protect her son and a son desperate to assert his own strength." --Carolina de Robertis, San Francisco Chronicle

Lorenza and Mateo feel lost in their own history. He cannot understand why his father, Ramón--an Argentine militant in the resistance against Videla's dictatorship--decides to disappear without a trace. She cannot find the words to explain to her son why his father suddenly became a threat. In searching for Ramón while reconstructing the fragments that make up their past, these two characters, at times close partners, at times opponents, return to Buenos Aires.

Scouring the city, Lorenza talks to Mateo about the life she and Ramón led during the dictatorship. Quieting the pain, fear and loss, the mother tones down the words while her teenage son inquires and questions everything. Both subject to the daily task of discovering, through conversations, how they've reached this point of no return where she must write the story, and he must find his father.

A novel about revelation, about the fall of heroes who inhabit private and public battles, about the relationship between parents and children, and about a love and an unattainable dream that will inevitably meet their end.