"The Fountains of Silence" is set in 1950s Madrid, Spain during the rule of Francisco Franco who was a fascist dictator. The story follows orphaned teenager Ana and her family, who live and work in Madrid and an American teen, Daniel, an aspiring photographer who is in Madrid with his parents and is a guest in the hotel where Ana works. Life has been difficult for Ana and her family, they are all working to scrape by, while Daniel enjoys a life of comfort and ease as the son of a wealthy oil tycoon from Texas. Daniel encounters the darker side of what life is like for the citizens of Madrid on his first day there when he is accosted by guards for taking their photo while he is walking around the city. Daniel begins to understand things there may not be what he thought as he befriends Ana.
He continues to show interest in her, not understanding that this puts her socially in an unacceptable light, as social mores are far more conservative in Spain than in America. Additionally, there are interrelated characters, one is Ana's cousin, a novitiate nun who works in an orphanage where infants who initially appeared healthy at birth whose parents are later told did not survive or children left with the nuns to be baptized but then are not returned. The mystery of what is happening is not difficult to suss out but makes for another sad side story that wends back to Daniel.
This was an interesting read with short chapters that make it easy to engage with this book.
He continues to show interest in her, not understanding that this puts her socially in an unacceptable light, as social mores are far more conservative in Spain than in America. Additionally, there are interrelated characters, one is Ana's cousin, a novitiate nun who works in an orphanage where infants who initially appeared healthy at birth whose parents are later told did not survive or children left with the nuns to be baptized but then are not returned. The mystery of what is happening is not difficult to suss out but makes for another sad side story that wends back to Daniel.
This was an interesting read with short chapters that make it easy to engage with this book.