A Heart So White

"A Heart So White chronicles with insistence the relentless power of the past. Juan knows little of the interior life of his father Ranz; each has always seemed comfortable with their friendly but distant orbits. Only when Juan marries (and his new wife begins to find much to talk about with Ranz) does his son consider the past anew, and begin to ponder what he doesn't really want to know. Secrecy - its possible convenience, its price, and even its civility - hovers throughout the novel.

A Heart So White becomes a sort of anti-detective story of human nature. Intrigue; the sins of the father; the fraudulent and the genuine; marriage and strange repetitions of violence: Marias elegantly sends shafts of inquisitory light into shadows. At the center of A Heart So White are the costs of ambivalence."--BOOK JACKET.