The familiar twinge appears inside Puri. He speaks of contentment. He is probably well acquainted with it. He pursues his questions with a rigor of authority. He is never chastised, threatened, or laughed at for seeking explanation. Puri hears the threatening words of Sister Hortensia.
God is calling to you through these questions, Purificación. Rather than sharing your sinful queries aloud, you will devote yourself to contemplation and prayer. You will.
Puri rises to leave. Yes, she sees it all around him. Handsome and kind Daniel Matheson knows contentment, so he assumes she does as well.
“It’s not contentment,” says Puri, walking to the door. “It’s a vocation, from the Latin vocare, ‘to call.’ It’s a calling—to love and serve. We all choose to live out our vocations in different ways. Your father has a calling to oil. Your sister mentioned your calling to photography. Our former director, Sister Hortensia, she had a calling to orphans and placed so many of us.”
Daniel’s brow lifts in surprise.
“Yes. Any life choice involves sacrifice. Perhaps you’ve discovered that? I chose to enter this order seeking God, not explanations. So, you see, Señor Matheson, after many years of questions and prayer, I finally felt a calling of my own. And my calling was to silence.”
“But, something you said,” begins Daniel. “It resonates with me. You said that knowing is something that evolves, that what we think we know can be quite far from the truth.”
“Yes.”
“But what if we actually do arrive at certainty? In your opinion, Sister, once we discover the truth”—he stares at her—“what should we do?”
A note of hope rings through Puri’s heart.
He knows.
She walks back to the table.
“When you discover the truth, you must speak it aloud and help others to do the same, Señor Matheson. Truth breaks the chains of silence.” Puri puts a trembling hand to her chest. Her voice drops to a whisper.
“It sets us all free.”
Thousands of babies were stolen from their parents during the Franco dictatorship in Spain, but the story was suppressed for decades. Now, the first stolen-baby case has gone to court. The trial is expected to last months. As Lucía Benavides reports from Spain, it’s a dark part of Spanish history that is finally getting more recognition.
Between 1939 and the late 1980s, it is alleged that over 300,000 babies were stolen from their birth mothers and sold into adoption.
—LUCÍA BENAVIDES
from “First Stolen-Baby Case from Franco Dictatorship Goes to Court in Spain”
NPR
August 14, 2018
Spaniards after Franco’s death and during the transition to democracy entered into what has long been called here a pact of silence, which the new law clearly aims to undo. As the historian Hugh Trevor-Roper put it 40 years ago, about a different regime, “A single personal despot can prolong obsolete ideas beyond their natural term, but the change of generations must ultimately carry them away.”
—MICHAEL KIMMELMAN
from “In Spain, a Monumental Silence”
The New York Times
January 13, 2008
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The Fountains of Silence is a work of historical fiction.
The Spanish Civil War and the ensuing thirty-six-year dictatorship of Francisco Franco are, of course, very real. If this novel intrigues you, please research the history of Spain, the Spanish Civil War, and the dictatorship.
I am indebted to the many incredible writers, historians, scholars, diplomats, artists, photographers, and journalists who have chronicled both the dictatorship and the Spanish Civil War. If historical novels stir your interest, I encourage you to pursue the facts, nonfiction, memoirs, and personal testimony available. These are the shoulders that historical fiction sits upon.
I first explored Spain while on tour for my debut novel. I fell in love not only with the country, I fell in love with its people. From Bilbao to Barcelona, through Madrid to Valencia, Tarragona and beyond, I met readers from varied family backgrounds who displayed deep empathy for hidden history. They welcomed me with open arms and shared insight on conflict, human suffering, and resilience. I discovered that Spain is a classroom for the human spirit.
In 2011, Tamra Tuller and Michael Green at Philomel sent me an article by Raphael Minder from the New York Times entitled “Spain Confronts Decades of Pain over Lost Babies.” I began to research the Spanish Civil War and the postwar period—from 1936 to Franco’s death in 1975, through the transition to democracy. I studied birthright, the many definitions of fortune, and the lines that divide. I embarked on research trips to Spain, meeting witnesses who brought the country’s history and hardship to life. During my trips I heard common refrains:
It’s very difficult to explain.
It’s nuanced and complex for an outsider.
You just can’t understand.
Like the character of Daniel, I wanted to understand. I wanted to reciprocate the affection, comprehension, and compassion that the people in Spain had shown toward me and the history within my books. As my research progressed, I realized that the refrains were accurate. Not only is it difficult for an outsider to understand, I often found myself asking, “What right do we have to history other than our own?”
My previous projects have contained threads of my own personal family history, so I was able to write those stories from the inside out. When I began my research for what became The Fountains of Silence, I realized that if I wanted to write about Spain I’d have to write from the outside in.
So I studied the postwar intersections between the United States and Spain, examining the difficulties between two very different nations attempting to interact and cooperate while also pursuing individual goals.
How can they bridge the width to understanding?
I then pulled the focus tighter—hopeful young people from different backgrounds, desperate to cooperate, express love, and pursue truth, but fenced by culture and circumstance.
How can they bridge the width to understanding?
During my study and examination, the fragile tension between history and memory emerged. Some were desperate to remember and others were desperate to forget. I was haunted by the descriptions of the war—and also war after war. Hunger, isolation, fear, and the socialization of silence. Suffering emerged the victor in Spain, touching all sides and breaking many hearts.
History reveals that, amidst war, the highest tolls are often paid by the youngest. Helpless children and teenagers become innocent victims of wretched violence and ideological pressure. Some in Spain were orphaned or separated from their families. Others, like Rafa and Fuga, were sent to social aid “homes,” where they were fed a steady diet of torture. During the postwar period and dictatorship in Spain, young people were left amidst the wreckage to navigate an inheritance of heartache and responsibility for events they had no role in causing. The young adult narrative is what I chose to represent in the story—innocent youths who, instead of pursuing hopes and dreams, became fountains of silence.