In Brief: Roses in the Night: Mayan Sisters Confront CIA-Backed Terror

By Malcolm Bell. Self-published, 2023. 270 pages. $19.99/paperback; $8.99/eBook.

This fact-based novel traces the story of Brenda, a young Mayan woman who flees hunger and political violence in her home country of Guatemala, works in El Salvador, and eventually immigrates to the United States. She becomes involved with the Sanctuary Movement and has to balance her motivation to speak publicly about human rights abuses in Central America with her need to safeguard the clergy members who helped her escape.

The author, Malcolm Bell, is a retired lawyer who became active in the Sanctuary Movement in 1986 and worked at the International Mayan League/USA for 25 years. A few years before this political activism, he joined the Religious Society of Friends, and is currently a member of Wilderness Meeting in Shrewsbury, Vt.

Bell touchingly depicts Brenda’s departure from her beloved sister, Maria, who stays behind in Guatemala. Brenda intends to learn Spanish so she can protect her fellow speakers of the Mayan language Mam from signing exploitative contracts without understanding their contents. She finds work as a maid and nanny for a Spanish-speaking family and develops her language skills through conversations with the children. In their first meeting, Brenda’s employer directs her to exchange her colorful Mayan clothing for less vivid Western attire. The conversation offers a microcosmic glimpse at the power relations that govern Brenda’s life.

The narrative perspective shifts several times throughout the book. In addition to the human narrators, a quetzal (shown on the cover) tells part of the story, offering a panoramic, literal bird’s-eye view that also homes in on the individual victims of anti-Mayan genocide. One of the book’s many strengths is that early on it acknowledges rape as a form of political violence. An author’s note at the end shares the facts and experiences on which the novel is based.

Readers interested in the impact of twentieth-century U.S. foreign policy on Central America will appreciate this intimate and compelling novel.

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Sharlee DiMenichi is FJ staff writer