Stolen Lives is the second in Joyce Yarrow’s Zahara series. In the first, Zahara and the Lost Books of Light, Seattle-based journalist Alienor Crespo decides to document her journey to recover her Sephardic family’s past when Spain offers citizenship to those wrongfully dispossessed. In Stolen Lives, she has achieved her goal and has remained in Spain, becoming involved in another family-related mystery. She works with her new love, Mico, to uncover cases of stolen children. Franco’s Fascist regime has discovered a “gene” that causes people to become degenerates and join the communists. The children of these women are stolen and placed with “good” families to have that gene eradicated. The novel becomes a women’s fiction thriller as Alienor uncovers Rightist political intrigues and plots to destroy evidence that such atrocities were committed and a search for a hidden cache of gold coins.
Joyce Yarrow deftly weaves past and present, far-right Spanish politics and the current situation in Spain into a cohesive whole that also reflects what has happened in the United States in the past. Think of the placement of Native American children into government schools and the attempts to extinguish their culture. Also, later, during the Baby Scoop Era of the mid-20th century, babies were placed for adoption from “maternity homes” often with no consent from the birth mothers. The settings and food seem authentic and are well-described, giving a flavor of authentic Spain. The novel is short at 250 pages but ends rather abruptly.
Like Zahara and the Lost Books of Light, Stolen Lives is novel of strong women, blending women’s fiction with elements of thrillers.
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Stolen Lives (All Bilingual Press, March 15, 2024) is available through:
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You can read my review of Book 1 of the Zahara series, Zahara and the Lost Books of Light, here.
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