Fiction. Latino/Latina Studies. Translated from the Spanish by Alice Weldon. March 23, 1976. Berta watches as her lover, Atilio, a union organizer, is thrown from a window to his death on the sidewalk below. The next day, Colonel Jorge Rafael Videla stages a coup d'etat and a military dictatorship takes control of Argentina. Though never a part of Atilio's union efforts, Berta is on a list to be "disappeared" and flees to relatives in the countryside. There she becomes part of the family she knows only from old photographs: Aunt Avelina, who blasts records from an old player; Uncle Nepomuceno, who watches slugs slither in the garden every afternoon; and Uncle Javier, who sits in his tiny grocery store day and night. When Berta learns that government officials are still looking for her, she realizes she must run even further to save her life.

Author Hometown: Salta ARG



About the author: Gloria Lise is a lawyer and professor at the National University of Salta in Argentina, as well as a singer and an instrumentalist. She was fifteeen years old in 1976 when a coup d'etat overthrew the government of Isabel Martinez de Peron.

Reviews:
http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6664723.html
http://www.brooklynrail.org/2009/07/books/tokens0709
http://blogcritics.org/books/article/book-review-departing-at-dawn-a/