All That Followed

Starred review from April 20, 2015
Set in the foothills of the Pyrenees, Urza’s debut novel is as subtle and enveloping as the txirimiri, a Basque word for “rain so fine that an umbrella is useless against it.” The village of Muriga, a Basque stronghold dominated by a “looming fortress” that was once the site of a massacre during the Spanish Civil War, is picturesque and sinister in equal measure. It is a town proud of its antifascist past but bedeviled by a strain of separatist extremism that leads several teenagers to murder a local politician. The novel is narrated by three townspeople, each providing a first-person account that cautiously circles the political crime in increasingly tight orbits: Joni, a transplanted American teacher of English, who, despite having lived in Muriga for half a century, is still considered a stranger; Mariana, the widow of the slain politician who is convinced that the ghost of her kidney donor, a young terrorist killed by the police, is haunting her; and Iker, a student of Joni’s and one of the perpetrators of the attack. Deceptions and past tragedies come to light, but most remarkable is how Urza thematically handles the violence lurking in an insular community. Be it a Basque town with its own language and history, a transplanted organ, or a nonnative inhabitant, everything in this tense novel revolves around the notion of an ineradicable foreignness that inexorably leads to bad blood. Agent: Katherine Fausset, Curtis Brown.

Starred review from June 1, 2015
A terrorist bombing in Madrid stirs up memories in a Basque town of a politician kidnapped and killed, an act that linked the political and the personal, in this thoughtful, ambitious debut. The American teacher Joni has been in the town of Muriga for more than 50 years when an al-Qaida cell's 2004 attack on Madrid's Atocha train station recalls a local episode of Basque separatist violence six years earlier, one of "these acts that erode the soul of a people." In chapters that alternate among the voices of Joni; Mariana, the victim's wife; and Iker, one of the kidnappers, Urza illuminates the before-from days to decades-and after of the abduction. Mariana remembers that while her husband pursued party politics in Bilbao half the week, she was having an affair with the young American teacher who came to Muriga to replace the elderly Joni at the local school. Iker speaks from his prison cell, recalling how he was drawn reluctantly from truancy and vandalism to violence even as he sought a way out of the town through English lessons with Joni. And the American teacher, whose early years in Muriga were scarred by deep love and loss that cemented him to the town, finds his friendship with Mariana collapsing in the wake of her husband's death. Urza's fragmented, cinematic structure can confuse with its disjointed chronology, yet it works well to let each member of the trio reveal a different segment of the town's populace and history. While Iker's crime grew from the pointless acts and energy of youth and Mariana's infidelity was enabled by party politics, Joni's long-ago lover could recall seeing her father shot by Franco's men at the former army barracks that came to serve as the high school where Joni taught students like Iker. The author's family is from Spain's Basque region, which helps explain why an American writer would venture into this fraught history, and Urza does so convincingly, revealing the human faces behind the masks of terrorism and its collateral damage.

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June 1, 2015
The unexpected murder of a small-town Spanish politician by fringe Basque separatists is of less consequence to first-time novelist Urza than all that leads up to the tragic death. As the doomed end for young, nationalist politician Jose Antonio is known from the beginning, suspense comes not from waiting for events to unfold but from a creeping sensation that such sudden tragedies are often inevitable. Extremism and terrorism feel as commonplace in the town of Muriga as adultery, gossip, and griefwhich is to say, they feel lived in by the three narrators, who take turns recounting their own part in the tale and giving their nuanced view on the Basque struggle for autonomy. Urza, who has Basque roots, provides an intimate perspective on how communities ripped apart by ill-conceived acts of violence can be slowly stitched back together and given a second life. This thoughtful novel will draw some literary-thriller readers, but its real strength is what it contributes to the modern-day conversation on terrorist extremism, particularly as it pertains to how youth from small, long-oppressed towns can get pulled into the fray.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

June 15, 2015

In this multilayered novel, told from different perspectives, the small town of Muriga in the Basque region of Spain has a turbulent history that ensnares the residents in an endless cycle of violence, revenge, and victimization. The central story concerns the events surrounding the death of a local politician, who was kidnapped and murdered by Basque political activists in the late 1990s. An American, Joni (or Johnny) Garrett, who has been in the area for 50 years and is still an outsider, is friend of Mariana, the wife of the politician. Various events in Joni's and Mariana's life are related as these two alternate first-person chapters along with Iker, a young man who was one of the kidnappers and a student of Joni's. Iker dreamed of leaving the region and making a new life for himself and his young lover but is caught up with his friends in political activism and ends up in prison for a crime that was poorly planned and went tragically awry. VERDICT A well-told story of the Basque region, whose violent past is familiar to many. Here, however, the reader is immersed in the landscape's color, language, and culture while reading an absorbing political mystery. [See Prepub Alert, 2/9/15.]--James Coan, SUNY at Oneonta Lib.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2015

Urza, who boasts both law and MFA degrees, draws on his Basque roots as he explores the aftermath of a local politician's kidnapping and murder in a northern Spanish town. After five years, life in Muriga is just easing back to normal when the Atocha train bombings in Madrid revivifies the tragedy of losing the idealistic young man, and the townsfolk get up the courage to ask what really happened. Clearly, the teenage radical in jail for the crime is only a part of the story.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.