Review by Booklist Review
Journalist Gilliland's first book is the true story of the Argentinean grandmothers who stood up against a tyrannical political regime in order to find the people that the government was disappearing. It is a recounting of Argentina's Dirty War (la guerra sucia) that took place during the 1970s and '80s and the circumstances that led to the military takeover of a country rife with political dissent. This book is certainly not easy to read, relating both personal stories of those who were disappeared and those who set out to find them as well as the political circumstances surrounding the leaders of the government and the civilians they set out to trample. The book opens with a vivid description of a citizen witnessing a disappearance and goes on to share the story of Patricia Julia Roisinblit from her birth to the destruction of everything she held dear. A Flower Traveled in My Blood is an unflinching playbook of what happens when a government's tyrannical impulses are fed as well as a heartbreaking, immersive account of what it means to stand up against injustice and demand that those who allow it move out of the way.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Journalist Gilliland's enthralling debut recaps the decades-long battle by a group of Argentinian grandmothers, the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, to locate their grandchildren who were kidnapped by the junta in the 1970s. The "desaparecidos," or "the disappeared," were alleged "subversives"--mostly members of leftist groups--who were abducted, tortured, and killed by the military dictatorship's forces. Horrifyingly, those who were pregnant were allowed to wait to give birth before their executions so that junta members could clandestinely adopt the babies. Gilliland centers the story of one Abuela, Rosa Tarlovsky de Roisinblit, and her tireless search for her grandchild. Through Rosa, Gilliland follows the Abuelas as they employ every method at their disposal to find their grandchildren, from protesting at the risk of death to recruiting an American geneticist to develop testing to prove grandparental lineage, a scientific breakthrough that made them "pioneers of genetic genealogy." While the Abuelas succeeded in locating more than 130 grandchildren to great public fanfare, the book delves into how these discoveries led to further complications, including fierce custody battles and adult children's struggles with the revelation their parents were actually their kidnappers. Noting that several potential grandchildren resisted genetic testing, Gilliland also poses larger questions about identity ("Is it the sole property of an individual--or does their family and their society also have a right to truth?"). Written with the nail-biting verve of a thriller, this spotlights relentless perseverance in the face of unthinkable brutality. (July)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
When women banded together to reunite families. In the last half of the 20th century, Argentina twitched chaotically, violently, between the working-class orientation of Eva and Juan Perón and the reactionary moral rigidity of Juan Carlos Onganía before a coup by Jorge Rafael Videla in 1976 forever reset the country's history. Under Videla's direction, a violent military junta kidnapped, tortured, and murdered thousands of Argentines (by some estimates as many as 30,000 who were deemed "subversives"). Centering the saga of the Roisinblits and their matriarch Rosa, journalist Gilliland, in her first book, approaches this brutal period through the eyes of the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, a scrappy, courageous group of mothers of desaparecidos who had infants or were pregnant when they were disappeared. Over decades of instability that followed the junta's rule, the Abuelas were at the forefront of calls for accountability and justice, anchoring their grief in the search for grandchildren who had been born in detention centers and adopted--appropriated--by new families, often with connections to Videla's government. The author conveys the complicated, heart-wrenching fullness of her characters' individual stories and shades their backdrop with compulsively readable history of geopolitical tension and the emerging DNA science that fueled the Abuelas' fight. Gilliland's work, exhaustively and compassionately researched, offers a crucial counterbalance to the dark legacy of Argentina's desaparecidos, injecting the light of a model resistance movement that lay the groundwork for future international human rights investigations. Her humility and respect for the fraught journeys her subjects made toward each other and for the vital questions their journeys raised--about power, identity, family, and collective memory and healing--ensure the text will resonate for generations the world over. A piercing, emotional tribute to the value of persistent resistance. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
