Beyond the Ties of Blood

In Mallon’s debut novel, college student Eugenia Aldunate falls madly for Manuel Bronstein, a leftist rebel, during Pinochet’s brutal ascension in Chile. Manuel’s activism lands them both in prison, where they’re tortured, and where Eugenia learns that she’s pregnant. After her release, she flees to Mexico, where she raises her daughter, Laura, and becomes a human rights journalist. Years later, while Eugenia is on a teaching fellowship in Boston, Pinochet is deposed and Eugenia is asked to testify before Chile’s Truth Commission. Still haunted by the past, she returns to a family and country that have grown alien to her, and confronts the staggering losses that have made her alien to herself. Mallon conveys both the breathtakingly epic and heartbreakingly personal fallout of the bloody 1973 coup, successfully highlighting the sacrifices borne by generations of women and the small-scale moral dislocation of large-scale atrocity. But she also leans heavily on hackneyed conventions that flatten her extraordinary characters, rendering their relationships perfunctory and the plot progression mechanical. Eugenia, Laura, and Sara, all of them ostensibly strong, accomplished women, are buoyed more by emotion than conviction, a quality that elevates them as spiritual martyrs while diminishing their agency and authenticity. Agent: Lisa Grubka, Foundry Literary + Media. (June 6)