As a self-proclaimed historian, having minored in history in university, I thought I had a rather broad but educated sense of modern history. Surely the most significant events between WWI and now I would’ve heard, right? Wrong. I had absolutely no idea that something like this was going on for decades and that it occurred within living memory for the generations affected by such dark, haunting truth.

The Fountains of Silence by Ruta Sepetys is set in Madrid in 1957 during the fascist dictatorship of General Francisco Franco. Tourists and foreign businessmen flock to Spain for business deals, among them is eighteen-year-old Daniel Matheson, the son of an oil tycoon, who has his own agenda – to connect with his mother’s homeland through the lens of his camera. He meets Ana Torres Moreno, a worker at the hotel his family stays at, and together they discover the true horrors cloaked behind pleasantries and curated, closely monitored foreign experience within Spain.

When I opened the book I felt the sunshine and the heat, I could see the layers of professionalism and pleasantries that masked the truths of poverty, control, and absolute horror. I could feel the change in tension and pacing as the story progressed, the stakes rising and the realisations as they unfolded. Everything felt so palpable and real, terrifyingly so upon recalling the fact that this was less than seventy years ago. These events were life-changing and cruel and so many people suffered and most of us are none the wiser to the realities of modern-era Spain.

This story broke my heart. Not only that, but it shaped my perception of the perfect historical fiction novel. This is the kind of writing I aspire to create when it comes to historical fiction. The facts and perspectives, the research and the curation of detail that has gone into this work, interwoven with fiction and poetic description, resulting in such a beautiful, emotive piece of art. Ruta Sepetys deserves all the praise and awards she gets and more because this calibre of writing is astounding. The Fountains of Silence is a masterpiece that everyone should experience.