Fiction. Latino/Latina Studies. Jewish Studies. At the core of this novel about love and exile, religious intolerance and persecution is the issue of identity and the effects of concealing one's identity in order to survive. Alfonso, a native of Cadiz, learns at the age of thirteen that certain members of his family have remained secretly faithful to their Jewish roots. It is a time of ruthless persecution of Spanish Jews under the newly established Inquisition. As a young child, Alfonso had watched the Jews leave Spain under the general expulsion of 1492. Raised as a Catholic, and endowed with a mystical nature, the revelation of his family's Jewish roots comes as a shock, and he struggles to reconcile his conflicts through the study of the Kabbala, which serves him as a bridge between the two religions.