Making Limonada: Memories of an Andalucian Village During the Last Years of Franco’s Fascist Spain

Making Limonada is the true story of life in a Mediterranean village that the author and her three young children blindly fled to when her husband was suddenly killed in California. Without a sheltering network of family she sought refuge in the unknown and discovered a world of women dressed in black, mourning the death of husbands, fathers and brothers who died or disappeared in the Spanish Civil War and the terrible years of hunger and deprivation that followed. Suddenly no one felt sorry for her; she was just another young widow in the land of the bereaved. As the author peels away layers of fear and loss, her village friends begin to disclose their own irreparable losses. In the end it is these people and their stories and the bonds they create based on trust and love that heal her. Making Limonada is a love story with Andalucia as the emotional focus. It brings to life a vibrant and beautiful place that has long disappeared from the face of modern Spain.