That Would Be Telling
A Coming of Age Novel
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On the way home to Portugal, Daniel Vargas drops in to see his adopted French cousin Mireille. Her latest plan: Together they’ll figure out sex, as they did tennis. Yikes! He sucks at tennis!
It’s July 1960, and Portugal lurches toward a bloody independence war in Angola. Daniel is nearly eighteen. Grief at the loss of his mother still flares up, and so does anger at a father turned workaholic. On a bad day soon after his mother died, his childhood friend Teresa rescued him at school. He owes a debt he can never repay.
Resisting Mireille will be a roller-coaster, so Daniel finds solace with his twenty-something beach neighbor. Admittedly “not easy to bed,” she keeps letting him try. Meanwhile, he’s a Good Samaritan to a sick classmate. Accidental nudity ensues, and she stops thinking him a despicable snob. All this, the Mireille roller-coaster too, amuses Teresa. Why does that depress Daniel no end?
Thousands are butchered in Angola, and the war is on. It will last fourteen years. Daniel consults the general in charge of logistics, Teresa’s father. His advice: If you won’t cozy up to a safe posting, enlist before AK-47s replace the machetes. Daniel agonizes over his fears, his courage, his integrity, the lines he won’t cross. He tells no one until it’s too late.
On the cover: The Rooster of Barcelos, a classic Portuguese folk-art object based on a 16th century legend
Cover photography by William Ames
Cover design by David M.Gonçalves
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