I love historicals because I am fascinated not only with History itself but even more so the people who lived or may have lived it. The Chronicles of the Spanish Civil War is about many such fictional characters. I even fell in love with several of them thanks to Goyer’s wonderful descriptions and character development. I am not a fan of “War Stories”, violence and bloody massacres which is what many readers might expect when you mention the setting is a War. A Shadow of Treason is far from a War Story but rather it is a story of people who were caught up in the political tension of that period and affected not only by the War itself but by their own divided or questioned loyalties. Both this book and it’s prequel are stories of love, trust, loss, growth and many other things that come during our times of trial.
Sophie goes to Spain in A Valley of Betrayal to find her “fiancee” Michael. He has been “on assignment” for his newspaper job and she finally decides her only choice is to go find him. She hasn’t been able to forget him and their time in Boston since he left and she told him she couldn’t come to Spain with him. By the time A Shadow of Treason starts Sophie is in a town by the name of Guernica and thinks Michael was a casualty of the war. She has traveled to Guernica on the suspicion that something was fishy about his death. She was told that she could find a friend of Michael’s, Jose, there and he would be able to answer her questions about Michael’s death as well as other things.
Read the books to find out more about Sophie, Michael, Jose and many other characters that Goyer has created and dropped into this Spanish setting during a very turbulent period of the country and also Europe’s history that prefaced World War II. Will Sophie find out the truth about Michael? Will it be a deal breaker if she does or were there already too many lies between them when he “died”? These questions and many more will be raised and answered by these two books. I am looking forward to A Whisper of Freedom the 3rd book in this series which is set to release in Feb 2008.
