Menu
This remarkable and highly original novel, the mesmerizing tale of Dolores Rivas, begins in an orphanage in 1950s Buenos Aires. A wounded girl, she becomes convinced that her mother is the child mistress of ex-President Juan Perón.
Epitaph for Sorrows builds on the true-life affair of Perón and fourteen-year-old Nelly Rivas, a scandal contributing to Perón’s overthrow. Dolores fashions a meticulous journal to record her life, entrusting it to a prominent journalist. At great risk, he transforms it into a poignant epitaph indicting a system that embraces death and dismisses Dolores’ life. Her quixotic search for her mother personifies Argentina’s quest for truth in a world of lies and records the human costs of state terror.
Since completing his PhD at Stanford University in 1978, Steven Sanderson has written several scholarly books and monographs about contemporary Latin America. He spent thirty-five years living, working, and traveling in the region as a university professor and non-profit executive. He lives with his wife and dog in the Southeastern United States. This is his second novel, following The Curtain of Hope (2018). His current project is a frontier saga set in nineteenth-century Tierra del Fuego.