Starting from two poignant and prophetic lines by the martyred Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca, “Look at his spent body / blackened with shadows and wolves,” William Herrick’s novel evokes a contemporary Spain where the fraternal clash of loyalists and fascists has given way to the conflict between conservatives and revolutionaries––fathers and sons. In portraits of the punctilious General Luis Alfara Fernandez, who never questioned the wishes of his General, and his terrorist son Rodolfo, who always questioned his father’s arbitrary authority, Herrick’s narrative is as stark and mercilessly lighted as the Andalucian landscape.