A Million Drops
A Novel
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4.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
International Bestseller: A family’s dark past is inextricably tied to the interlocked histories of European fascism and communism . . .
A “darkly engrossing” crime thriller blending “the best elements of historical fiction, psychological thrillers, and literary character studies” (Washington Post)
Spain, present day: Gonzalo Gil is a disaffected lawyer stuck in a failed career and a strained marriage, dodging the never-ending manipulation of his powerful father-in-law. The fragile balance of Gonzalo’s life as a father and husband is pushed to the limit when he learns, after years without news of his estranged sister, Laura, that she has committed suicide under suspicious circumstances. Resolutely investigating the steps that led to her death, Gonzalo discovers that Laura is believed to have murdered a Russian gangster who kidnapped and killed her young son.
What seems to be revenge is just the beginning of a tortuous path that will take Gonzalo through the untold annals of his family’s past. He discovers the fascinating story of his father, Elías Gil, the great hero of the antifascist resistance. As a young engineer Elías traveled to the USSR committed to the ideals of the revolution, but was betrayed, arrested, and confined on the infamous Nazino Island, ultimately becoming a key figure, admired and feared, during Spain’s darkest years.
A suspenseful and utterly absorbing literary thriller, A Million Drops is a visceral story of enduring love and revenge postponed from a master of international crime fiction.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This relentless tale of individual crimes and systemic atrocities from Spanish author Del rbol (The Sadness of the Samurai) opens in October 2001, not far from Barcelona, where Russian mobster Zinoviev drowns six-year-old Roberto Gil in a lake, in an apparent act of retaliation. Eight months later, the boy's mother, Deputy Insp. Laura Gil, is implicated in Zinoviev's death by torture and then commits suicide. Laura's younger brother, small-time attorney Gonzalo Gil, is left to figure out how his father, Communist hero El as Gil, was partly responsible for setting in motion the recent bloodshed and how the Matryoshka, a Russian criminal organization, is connected to the family's past and present. The characters of El as's generation survive a Siberian gulag, the Spanish Civil War, and WWII, but lose their humanity along the way, tainting the lives of those around them. Drawing on some of the most heinous events of the 20th century, Del rbol crafts a powerful but painful epic.
