Weight of the Living

Weight of the Living is a story of love and loss during Guatemala's civil war in the 1980s and 1990s. It follows the story of Daniel Golden, a UN human rights diplomat, who has been at the center of peace negotiations in Guatemala, in minefields in El Salvador and on the front-line of clashes between the landless movement and the government in Brazil. Along the way, he has collected deaths - sacrifices. The sacrifice which haunts him most is Hector Nawbey Toc. Hector is a self-aware indigenous guerrilla commander, as at ease seducing Gringas in country-western bars in the U.S. as he is in Guatemala's jungles. Hector disappears at the height of the Guatemalan peace negotiations, accused of kidnapping a member of the Vice President's family, leaving a wife, a lost son, a hole in the peace negotiations and more doubts than certainties about his final hours in the custody of the Guatemalan military. Daniel meets wealthy Florida liberals who support the guerrillas' cause; Hector's twin brother (who has migrated to the US and works as a stereo salesman); a widowed Guatemalan colonel involved in massacres who makes indigenous clothes for his young daughter's Barbies; and Luisa, the passionate and opinionated Colombian physician, former Sandinista supporter and abortion-rights advocate with skin the color of dulce de leche who becomes Daniel's wife. Back and forth from the 1980s to the present, the losses that Daniel could have prevented pile up -- and the two deaths he may have caused torment his waking hours. The title comes from a line in Miguel Angel Asturia's (Nobel prize winning author from Guatemala) book El Señor Presidente. The weight of the living makes the world turn during the day and the weight of the dead makes it turn at night. When there are more dead than living, there will be more light. Ultimately a story of survivors, the ending brings unexpected news of survival from one of the world's most brutal conflicts. Based on the author's personal experience living and working in Latin America, Weight of the Living is one of the first works of serious literary fiction to shed light on Guatemala's recent civil war.