Without Blood

From the author of the acclaimed international best-seller Silk, here is an unforgettable tale of the cruelty of war, a little girl’s shattered world, and her lifelong quest for revenge and healing.

When—in an unnamed place and time—Manuel Roca’s enemies hunt him down, they fail to discover Nina, his youngest child, hidden in a hole beneath his farmhouse floor. And so, doing just as her father instructed, she neither speaks nor stirs as he is viciously slain above her hiding place. Only after this carnage will one of the murderers discover Nina’s trapdoor. But Tito, a mere boy himself, is so enthralled by the sight of Nina’s perfect innocence that he says nothing to his accomplices.

By the time she has grown up, Nina’s innocence will have bloomed into something else altogether, and one by one the wartime hunters will become the peacetime hunted. But not until a striking old woman calls upon an old man selling newspapers in town—the old man Tito has become—can we know what Nina will ultimately make of her brutal legacy. With the indelible truth of a fable, Without Blood reminds us that all wars are the same—the same mistake infinitely repeated in the hearts and deeds of wronged men and women—and that no life can remain untouched by loss or by hope.