Title: Useful fools
Description: Alonso, a dirt-poor teenager living in Peru, helps out at the public health clinic his mother, Magdalena, opened, so that he can see Rosa, the beautiful and wealthy daughter of the clinic's doctor. Alonso and Rosa are both shattered when Magdalena is assassinated by a revolutionary terrorist organization. Left with no hope, Alonso might be seduced into becoming a guerrilla in the same organization that killed his mother. Rosa becomes disgusted with her father's complacency and leaves wealth and safety behind to somehow help what is left of Alonso's family. In this coming-of-age novel, C. A. Schmidt tells the story of how love can find its way through poverty and war.
Subjects: Juvenile fiction, Violence, Shining Path (Guerrilla group), Family life, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Sendero Luminoso (Guerrilla group), War, History
Places: Peru
Time periods: 1980-