A complex political situation in an unnamed South American city forces a father, mother, brother and the teenaged narrator Marta to house arrest in a rural military outpost, because of the father's journalistic activities. A wide range of events unfolds, from which readers can determine the gravity of the family's circumstances just as Marta gradually realizes this. The language of the narrative crackles with sharp images and understated terror; the phrasing seems to be from another culture. The novelist grew up in Colombia and now lives in the U.S. where she wrote this absorbing story which offers an exploration of principled response to repression. (Age 12 and older)

Because of the moral stand taken by her father, a newspaper editor who has persistently attacked the military dictator ruling their Latin American country, Marta and her family find themselves prisoners of the government.