Days of the Dead

MEXICO 1968... It's the year of the Olympics, the first sponsored by a developing country. There's a lot at stake, especially when activist students launch a summer-long protest aimed at reforming a ruthless authoritarian government. On October 2, ten days before the games are to begin, government security forces plan an armed assault. At a popular protest site near the Plaza of the Three Cultures in the heart of the city, an order is given to surround 10,000 unarmed students and their supporters and ambush them with rifle, machine gun and canon fire. The result: hundreds of innocent victims -- men, women and children -- are forcibly disappeared and murdered. Many survivors are imprisoned indefinitely. Known as the Tlatelolco Massacre, it was the first and worst act of repression in the nation's modern history, but is echoed most recently in September 2014 when 43 student activists were disappeared and murdered in Iguala, Guerrero. In this historical thriller, Daniel Mendoza, a 28-year-old American journalist, violates his professional code by inserting himself into the conflict with a greater cause in mind: Avoiding the final solution. Instead, the crisis deepens. Among those disappeared are his wife and 8-year-old daughter and a 21-year-old nursing student activist with whom he is deeply involved. The second half of the novel involves a knight's errand, a mission to find them, which extends into the mountains of Guerrero state and back again to Mexico City. This book is a sequel to his previous coming-of-age novel featuring Daniel Mendoza, "Transgressions" (2010).