In late 1936, eighteen-year-old Isidro Elejalde leaves his Basque village in northern Spain, spurred by the rousing words of a political essayist to join the fight to preserve his country's democracy from insurrectionists. Months earlier, Spanish generals had launched a military coup to overthrow Spain's newly elected left-wing government. The generals assumed the population would welcome the coup, but throughout the country citizens such as Isidro remained loyal to the ideals of democracy, and the Spanish Civil War began in bloody earnest. In Bilbao, Mariana raising her two young children while, through her writing, she decries the fascist-backed coup attempt and its German and Italian allies, imploring the world to support democracy. As the Nationalist forces assault the country, Mariana and Isidro's lives intersect fleetingly, yet in meaningful and lasting ways. What We Tried to Bury Grows Here is a remarkable feat of research and imagination, as well as a transcendent literary accomplishment.
