Publisher's Synopsis
The award-winning debut novel that ?brings to mind the atmosphere and tension of Gabriel Garcìa Márquez.?( Katharine Weber, author of The Little Women)
Nìtido Amán knows he was born in Guatemala, but he doesn?t know why his family left. Raised in the States by his immigrant parents, they never talked about it. When Nìtido loses his father to Alzheimer?s disease, his despondent mother grows increasingly silent and Nìtido realizes that his links to the past are disappearing.
Seeking answers, Nìtido travels to Guatemala against his mother?s wishes. Upon his arrival in the small town of Rìo Roto, he is mistaken for the new priest, and decides to play the part. From his parishioners, he catches tantalizing and frightening glimpses of the buried history he?s aching to know. In a place shrouded in secrets, Nìtido is at once determined and frightened to unearth the unnamed horrors it has seen.
With her elegant, hypnotic prose, this marks Sellers- Garcìa?s arrival as a distinctive new voice in fiction.