Pages of Mourning

It's 2017 and the crisis of forced disappearances has reached a tipping point after 43 docent students disappeared and are feared dead. Aureliano Mas the Second is a fledgling writer at a lucrative fellowship in Mexico City chaired by his aunt, Rose. When Aureliano was very young, his mother left without reason or trace. Aureliano is attempting to write a novel that mirrors his mother's unexplained disappearance while shattering Magical Realism as a genre in the process. It doesn't help though, that he's named after the protagonist of a touchstone of the Magical Realist canon, and raised in the mythical town of Comala. Aureliano searches for insight and closure from his father and from Rose, who grappled with his mother's disappearance through a failed novel of her own. Their stories lead back to the 1980's and the burgeoning drug trade, as Rose and Aureliano's mother journey as young runaways throughout the Mexican countryside. Meanwhi