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  • Reviewed by Allison Fraclose for TeensReadToo.com5

    TeensReadToo On October 23, 1980, 12-year-old Daniel Aguilar awoke to a crash and his mother's screams from the living room of his family's apartment in Santiago, Chile. When the young boy got out of bed, soldiers held a gun to his head until his mother told them where his father was hiding.

    For this reason, Daniel always blamed himself for his father's arrest. If not for him, then Marcelo Aguilar, AKA "Nino" and writer for the underground newspaper Justicia, would not have been sent to prison to endure years of torture at the hands of dictator Pinochet's cruel regime.

    Six years later, Daniel and the rest of his family anxiously await his father's release to their new home in Madison, Wisconsin. Now a junior in high school, Daniel has adjusted well to life in the United States, playing guitar with his band and for the church that his girlfriend Courtney's father runs.

    An extensive letter-writing campaign has finally freed Marcelo, who now joins them in exile in "Gringolandia," away from his compatriots who still suffer and die on the streets and in the prisons of Chile. Although Daniel wishes for a close relationship with the hero father he's admired all of these years, he and his family could never have prepared themselves for dealing with the man who bears more scars than his broken body can show.

    As Marcelo wrestles with his own internal conflict and spirals into a pit of self-destruction, Courtney takes it upon herself to rescue him in any way, and makes it her personal mission to bring Marcelo's cause to the ears of anyone who will listen. But, for Daniel, it's not all about his father's cause, and he may end up risking everything just to set things right in his own world.

    This politically charged novel brings a powerful twist of humanity to the stories that most Americans simply read about in the news. The aftermath and reconciliation of Marcelo's horrific experiences feel very real, and the effects that they have on the rest of the novel's characters can be quite unexpected at times, making the reader anxious to learn of the outcome.

    I must note that readers with a weak stomach may find it hard to make it through this book, simply for the descriptions of grisly torture techniques and the resulting physical and emotional scars they leave on their victims. by TeensReadToo

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