Naming the Spirits

No one who read Lawrence Thornton's stunning debut novel, Imagining Argentina, will ever forget its mesmerizing narrative voice, its mixture of realism and magic, or its haunting story of Argentina's Disappeared -- the thousands who vanished without a trace during their country's Dirty War.

Now Thornton, in an electrifying new work, returns to Argentina in the tale of a young woman's mysterious resurrection following a massacre in a killing field. After walking across the pampas, she appears on a doorstep in Buenos Aires, where she is taken in by a couple, both physicians, whose fierce reliance on the rational, explainable world has been shaken by their own daughter's disappearance. Locked inside the girl -- mute but for her first words on arrival, "I am" -- are the stories and names of eleven Argentinians executed in the night, representing the hope and despair of a people struggling to heal the devastating scars left by one fallen regime. The ghostly voices of these eleven carry the narrative of Thornton's powerful novel, lending a moving lyricism to its searing story of loss and redemption.