Slow Lightning

by Mark Frutkin

In 1936, escalating violence and unrest in Spain explode into civil war. In Barcelona, Sandro, an engineering student and an artist, is suddenly found guilty by association. Hunted by the police, he seeks refuge with Jorge, a wounded zealot, and Teresa, a revolutionary spy, until he is forced to flee the city alone, posing as a priest along the Saint James Way, the sacred pilgrimage route across northern Spain. With his trusty bicycle, Libertad (Sancho Panza to his Don Quixote), Sandro makes his way to his seaside village of Arcasella, avoiding roadblocks and arrest with the help of a picaresque cast of characters including a leftist partisan from Canada who hides Sandro for a week in the branches of a towering beech tree. Once home, Sandro retreats into a secret cave for several years where he begins to set in motion an elaborate and outrageous deception.

196 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 31, 2002

Reviews

[Tuck · Rating 3 out of 5]

set during civil war, this kind a funky novel deals with the usual suspects of this genre: war, hunger, fascist, "honest hard working farmers", a generally sympathetic view of the republicans and a generally (though mild) approbation of the fascists. from Raincoast Books of BC, a now defunct? and missed publisher.