Author Description

After the death of his godfather, Mikel, a would-be revolutionary, inherits the Basque signet ring, a priceless family heirloom that has fascinated and eluded him since he was a child. How did his grandfather-- an indentured Basque peasant-- acquire such a valuable ring? Different answers lurk in this rich tapestry of family memoirs. The truth-- or versions of it-- will test Mikel's beliefs in his cause, his family, and himself. Based on people and events in the author's own family, the overlapping tales move back and forth across time and generations, starting with the reflections of Mikel's great-grandmother Amaia Itsasmendí a Galarza. In the winter of 1939, the irreverent Basque matriarch talks to the photograph of her deceased husband Arturo Quijano as she burns furniture to keep warm during the fascist siege of Madrid. A strange, silent visitor sits with her, knitting and listening as Amaia recounts her days as a farm girl, a daring smuggler, and a maid in the sprawling Quijano de Goñ i mansion. It was here she met and fell in love with Arturo when he was the young man of the house. Born in secret, their son Emmanuel is raised by Amaia's father Patxi, in the emblematic mountain village of Galduamendí. After a difficult, indentured childhood, Emmanuel, deemed by Patxi as "too clever for his own good," travels with his mother to Madrid. Though he thrives at his father's house, he finds himself caught between his rural Basque roots, his upper-class Spanish life, and his newfound anarchist politics. A violent general strike and an affective indiscretion with Nina, the beguiling daughter of a Spanish army captain, forces him back to Galduamendi. There, his grandfather helps him sneak across the border into Basque France. Ending up in New York City's "Little Spain," he meets and marries Monserrat Romero, a young woman from Puerto Rico who is beautiful, troubled-- and pregnant. Seeking the life of tradition and leisure she once had in Puerto Rico, Monserrat