This novel reads with ease, its plot compelling from start to finish. The protagonist and co-protagonist are both fathers of severely handicapped children. Diego is a mild-mannered office worker whose life is monotonous—a fragile marriage, a son he barely knows. Then a chance meeting with a Middle Eastern man shatters his routine. This stranger, too, is the father of a handicapped child. An unlikely friendship blooms between them, rooted in shared pain. For the first time, Diego feels truly understood. He can speak his grief aloud, his shame and suffering, to someone who comprehends. Through this friendship, he discovers love for his own son and begins to shed his shame. But the stranger draws him into a violent world—shootouts, ambushes, dark conspiracies. Diego owes this man everything, yet knows nothing of his real identity. He knows only his soul. And so, bound by friendship, Diego finds himself willing to sacrifice his family, his very life. Yet through that same bond of shared suffering, he learns to face the future with renewed hope.
Laura Nardini, 2005
