Rafa and Fuga also suspect something is afoot when they see the empty coffins of supposedly dead babies. Deeply Catholic and, as someone born after the Spanish Civil War, immersed in Francoist propaganda, Puri nevertheless has her faith shaken by evidence of an act too horrifying to contemplate: Nuns at the orphanage, and doctors at the nearby maternity clinic, are taking healthy children from their parents and selling them to wealthy families for adoption. He knows nothing of the political situation when he arrives in Madrid, but his life intersects with Ana’s when his family stays at the hotel where she works, and she and Daniel fall in love.Īna’s cousin Puri works at the Inclusa, an orphanage run by the church. The son of a wealthy American oil man and a mother who was born in Spain, Daniel plans to spend his time in Madrid taking photographs, so he can enter a contest that will pay for journalism school.

Joining them in Madrid is Daniel Matheson. Rafa and Fuga bonded during their childhood spent in a home for boys, where they were sent to be re-educated. Rafa, in addition to working at a slaughterhouse and as a gravedigger, also tries to help his friend Fuga capitalize on his natural gifts and become a bullfighter. Ana, envious of the American girls she sees in magazines left at the hotel where she works, dreams of leaving Spain and experiencing freedom.

Julia wants Rafa and Ana to remember that the family depends on their income both to survive and to pay the rent for their mother’s grave.

She and her siblings, along with her husband Antonio and her baby, Lali, all live in a one-room shack in Vallecas. Desperately poor, the oldest sister, Julia, tries to keep the family together, including her younger sister and brother, Ana and Rafa. The father was shot by Franco’s minions, and the mother was imprisoned and dragged through the streets in humiliation before she died. The Torres Moreno family resisted Franco during the Civil War, and both parents were killed. Both parts are interspersed with excerpts from historical documents that provide context about the time. The second part of the novel, set 18 years later, follows the immediate aftermath of Franco’s death in 1975.

The first and longest part of the novel, set in Madrid in 1957, explores the lives of the people living under the fascist control of dictator Francisco Franco. The Fountains of Silence is about silence and memory-in this case, the memory of trauma.

Ruta sepetys the fountains of silence