A Million Drops

March 5, 2018
This relentless tale of individual crimes and systemic atrocities from Spanish author Del Árbol (The Sadness of the Samurai) opens in October 2001, not far from Barcelona, where Russian mobster Zinoviev drowns six-year-old Roberto Gil in a lake, in an apparent act of retaliation. Eight months later, the boy’s mother, Deputy Insp. Laura Gil, is implicated in Zinoviev’s death by torture and then commits suicide. Laura’s younger brother, small-time attorney Gonzalo Gil, is left to figure out how his father, Communist hero Elías Gil, was partly responsible for setting in motion the recent bloodshed and how the Matryoshka, a Russian criminal organization, is connected to the family’s past and present. The characters of Elías’s generation survive a Siberian gulag, the Spanish Civil War, and WWII, but lose their humanity along the way, tainting the lives of those around them. Drawing on some of the most heinous events of the 20th century, Del Árbol crafts a powerful but painful epic.

May 1, 2018

In 1933, young Spanish communist Elías Gil travels to Moscow to study. He is arrested and sent to Siberia for a crime he didn't commit. By the time he escapes, he has done unforgivable things: he lets the woman he loves drown and gives up her daughter to an abusive monster in return for saving his own life. The rest of Elías's story is the consequence of these choices. Forty years later, back in Spain, he disappears. His wife claims he was killed by fascists, but the facts are murky. Then in 2002, his son Gonzalo learns that his long-estranged sister Laura has committed suicide to avoid arrest for the torture-murder of a Russian who killed her son. Slowly at first, then faster, Gonzalo's life unravels as he investigates Laura's death and family history. Eventually, he realizes that his father wasn't the great antifascist hero of the Spanish Civil War he thought he was. By the end of this book, all are tainted and few live without regret. VERDICT This blockbuster novel by an award-winning Spanish author (The Sadness of the Samurai) succeeds as historical fiction, a thriller, and a detective story. Think Crime and Punishment, only more jarring.--David Keymer, Cleveland

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