The Language I Did Not Keep

A young man walks away from a fire into the dark. By morning he is dead. And the truth is buried in a word no one will say.

Get this book on Amazon:
Kindle edition (free with Kindle Unlimited) · Paperback on Amazon

Therapist Marisol Vega made her worst professional mistake public. Now a licensing board wants to know what else she got wrong, and the last thing she can afford is another crossed line. Then a new patient, a woman dismissed from a state commission, leaves a page from a grant application on the table in Marisol's Santa Fe office and doesn't pick it back up.

One word on that page sounds wrong in her grandmother's voice. It leads to a cultural foundation north of Abiquiú, in the valley where Marisol's family has lived for generations. It leads to the patient's nephew, found dead under the mesa in October. And it leads to Marisol's daughter, Sofia, who has found a place at the Foundation she has never had anywhere else.

Lupe Archuleta has never turned anyone away. This time she refuses.

As Marisol follows the money behind the Foundation's promises, she learns that a family's history can be both a source of truth and a prize someone else wants to claim. Every step closer to what happened on the mesa raises the stakes: her license, the fragile peace with her daughter, and the privacy of people who never asked to have their stories told. The second novel in The Casita Series is a story of grief, inherited silence, and the difference between uncovering the truth and having the right to tell it.

Book Two of The Casita Series. Start with The Mother I Did Not Know.

For readers who love the layered family histories of Julia Alvarez, the sense of place in Ana Castillo's fiction, and the emotional complexity of Louise Erdrich.

Free Reader's Companion: the map, the house on the river road, the family tree, and a note from the author. Get Volume Two.