See How Much I Love You
One never forgets one’s first love, as Montse, a headstrong teenage girl in the 1970s from a wealthy Spanish family, discovers when she falls in love with the charismatic Santiago, a boy not of her class. Pregnant with his child, Montse abruptly ends the relationship when she discovers him with another girl. Bewildered and defeated by her rejection, Santiago enlists in the foreign legion, where he is deployed to war-torn Western Sahara, a country and people he comes to love and accept as his own. Decades later, as an overworked physician, Montse will discover Santiago’s photo among the effects left by a deceased patient, and feel compelled to find her lover again. When her search takes her to the volatile desert region where Santiago was believed to have died, Montse herself is captured by rebels. With vivid imagery of desperate village life and keen insight into multicultural influences, Leante’s rich, often poetic novel of romance and international politics evokes a sensuous yet savage period in this region’s tumultuous history. --Carol Haggas