Law of Return - Hardcover

Praise for Rebecca Pawel:

"The immediate aftermath of the Spanish Civil War provides the bleak setting for Pawel's stirring first novel. . . . Unsparing in her depiction of the casual brutalities spawned by war, but also offers evidence of the power of little civilities and kindnesses in a novel that easily transcends the formulaic crime story . . . Should get some serious literary attention."-Publishers Weekly, starred

"Absolutely riveting . . . Rebecca Pawel's first act of surprising courage is to make her main character not one of the romantic Republicans of folk song and Hemingway story but an officer of their much-hated enemy, the dreaded Guardia Civil."-Dick Adler, Chicago Tribune

Carlos Tejada, newly promoted to the rank of lieutenant in the Guardia Civil, has been transferred to Salamanca, the city where he studied before the Civil War. His new police duties include monitoring parolees, former professors who were fired for protesting a Franco decree.

Elena Fernandez, having lost her job because of her political sympathies, has returned home to Salamanca from Madrid where she and Lieutenant Tejada had first been romantically involved. Her father, one of the parolees, was a distinguished professor of Classics. He has just received a letter from a Jewish friend, Professor Joseph Meyer, begging for help to cross into Spain from France before he is forcibly repatriated to Germany.

Professor Fernandez cannot violate his parole by traveling to the border town of San Sebastian, so Elena goes in his stead. Tejada, tracing a missing parolee, finds himself in San Sebastian, too. There Elena and Tejada's paths fatefully cross again.

Rebecca Pawel lives in New York City and teaches at a Brooklyn high school.