Lone Star Book Blog Tour: On Wings of Silence: Mexico ’68 by Dede Fox

CLICK TO PURCHASE

“Silence always has the final word.”

As a novel in verse, On Wings of Silence: Mexico ’68 is truly an amazing experience. A simple poem, a novella, or a full-length novel in prose can easily capture the horrifying moments of the Tlatelolco massacre in Mexico City just before the 1968 Olympics. But this novel in verse poetically places you in that exact spot through the eyes of 17-year-old Diana, an American student attending the university for college credits and seizing her independence from the life her parents expect her to choose.

While the 1968 massacre is the backdrop for this story, what takes center stage is all the emotions evoked in a young girl’s heart. The excitement of a foreign city. The refusal to become one of the many women who choose marriage as the only way. The reluctance of falling in love and everything that entails. The joy of falling in love and tasting the cinnamon kisses from a boy named Guillermo. The fear of disappearing, with no one to remember her name.

This story is about lost innocence, but not in the carnal sense. Instead, Diana loses her innocent belief that all people have the right to choose, to speak, to fight back, to demand answers. After the massacre, Diana quickly learns that questions and photos are dangerous, but ignoring the truth is unacceptable.

The unique construction of each verse drops the appropriate emotion into your lap, weighing you down as you absorb the meaning of the words and all the implications of what is happening and could happen and what did happen. For Diana, her first semester at the university in Mexico City is filled with wonder and adjustments. The cultural gap is wide, and the antiquated ideologies on human rights are frightening and bewildering to a girl from the United States. But the massacre rips the blindfold completely off, revealing the ugly truth that using your voice to protest and to question can erase you in the blink of an eye.

The recurring character of the belligerent shoe repairman who repeatedly calls Diana a puta, a whore, for no reason encapsulates the overall theme of this novel in verse. The hatred, the unwarranted judgment, the spitting and name calling all project an overall fear onto an innocuous person in a helpless way to retaliate against the unknown or what cannot be changed. Historically, many people, both protesters and bystanders, at Tlatelolco were silenced forever. But searching for the missing could prove to be just as dangerous. In this novel in verse, through photos and a refusal to forget, Diana becomes ensnared in this web of secrets as she struggles to understand and accept the unthinkable, but becoming disentangled from that web inflicts invisible wounds that may never heal.

Take a moment to brush up on the history of this violent day in 1968, and then immerse yourself in On Wings of Silence: Mexico ’68. Through the words and fluctuating structure, feel the story unfold and sense Diana’s despair at losing her naiveté but never her courage to run on silent feet to expose the veracity of that bloody day through a poignant, quickly taken photograph that fearlessly tells the truth about the day when so many voices were silenced and so many hearts were erased.

Enter the giveaway below for a chance to win a signed copy of On Wings of Silence: Mexico ’68 by Dede Fox (seriously, you need to read this) and other prizes.