Voices of the Basque Signet (ePub)

Based on people and events in the author's own family, the overlapping tales move back and forth across time and generations starting with Mikel's fascination with the family ring, to the reflections of the irreverent Basque matriarch Amaia, alone in her sprawling mansion during the siege of Madrid. Her anarchist son Arturo, caught between his village roots and political activism, fled to New York a decade earlier. There he met and married Monserrat, a Puerto Rican woman holding a secret. She finds herself in Madrid on the eve of the Spanish Civil War, waiting nervously for her husband to re-join her and their three children for a new life in Republican Spain. Their unexpected flight from Spain back to her native Puerto Rico is told through the eyes of her rebellious daughter Esmeralda, whose untamed imagination holds the key to her resilience in New York, Los Angeles, and a small town in the hills of Northern California. 'Voices of the Basque Signet' flows from the mountains of the Basque country and old Puerto Rico to Madrid, San Juan, New York, Los Angeles, and revolutionary Nicaragua. The women and men of the Itsasmendía, Quijano, and Romero clans navigate the upheavals of the twentieth century with humor, hope, and tenacity. Throughout, the Basque signet ring will change hands and reverse fortunes in this saga of love, war, secrets, and survival, reminding us that we are more than our best deeds or our worst shortcomings: we are part of a legacy.