Eduardo

Eduardo is the first person narrator of the novel. Throughout the narrative he attempts to reconcile himself with the truth of his heritage and familial history by retracing the lives of his ancestors in Italy, Poland, and Guatemala. Eduardo spends half of his childhood in Guatemala and the other in Florida. After moving to the States, he and his brother stop speaking Spanish and begin communicating strictly in English. This linguistic evolution is perhaps in part to blame for Eduardo's patchy memories of his childhood at his grandparents’ lake house in Guatemala.

Through Eduardo's fragmented reminiscences of his past, the reader learns about his grandparents' and great-grandparents' lives in Poland before and during the war. Because both his grandfathers are reluctant to discuss the atrocities they suffered, the details Eduardo knows about their experiences prior to Guatemala are few. Whenever he asks his Polish grandfather about Poland, his...