Inheriting Our Names by C. Vargas McPherson

An intensely rich and beautiful book written with the poetic touch of a writer whose heart unmistakably beats with Andalusian blood, Inheriting Our Names: An Imagined True Memoir of Spain’s Pact of Forgetting by C. Vargas McPherson is the devastating story based on true events of a family torn asunder by Franco’s Civil War in 1930s Spain. Tragedy mingles with religion and tradition as hunger and death approach the family’s barrio in the city of Seville. Now, their granddaughter, the author, travels to Spain to imagine their story, and uncover the truth that stays silent under Spain’s so-called Pact of Forgetting. This is a story of grief and pain, but also of healing and identity, of three women separated by time and war who weave together in a stunningly passionate examination of hidden history and its effects on the past, present, and future.