Smoke

Alemán (Family Album) offers an illuminating story of the military dictatorship in Paraguay. The aging protagonist, Gabriela, returns to Asunción after the end of Alfredo Stroessner’s decades-long rein in 1989, having spent the past 20 years abroad. Andrei, the man who raised her, has recently died, and he left his journal for her with his youngest son, Pablo. From its pages, Gabriela learns how Andrei sailed across the Atlantic from Palermo as a boy in the early 20th century after his mother’s death. In Buenos Aires, he meets bacteriologist Palamazczuk. Later, pursuing his interest in medicine, Andrei works with Palamazczuk to treat people with leprosy on an island at the Paraguay border, and in 1933 he winds up healing Stroessner, then a lieutenant in the army at war with Bolivia. As the novel draws to a close, Gabriela uncovers secrets from the journal and from speaking with Andrei’s children about how Andrei came to settle in Asunción and the painful ways the family was entwined with Stroessner after he became president in 1954. With striking revelations of the bargain struck by Andrei and wrenching details of Stroessner’s repressive rule, Alemán dramatizes Paraguay’s tumultuous history and the complex role played by its civilians. Fans of A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel Allende will find much to admire. (Oct.)