Tales from the blue archives

by Lawrence Thornton

For more than ten years, Dolores Masson has joined the women who march each Thursday in Buenos Aires' Plaza de Mayo in memory of los desaparecidos, the disappeared - the legions of men, women, and children who vanished without a trace at the hands of the generals during Argentina's Dirty War. And every Thursday night, she has visited the house where Carlos Rueda and his daughter, Teresa, sometimes offer mystical visions that locate these lost loved ones. Dolores has nearly moved past hope when Teresa at last utters the whereabouts of those she has waited so long to find: the two infant grandsons who disappeared when their mother was abducted. This single vision sets in motion an inexorable chain of events in which Dolores will find the boys, now teenagers, who have no memory of her or their true parents; in which the general who arranged their abduction will find his world imploding; in which the only parents the boys have ever known will be engulfed by suspicion, hatred, and remorse;