THE TOUR GUIDE

Tate offers a story of a troubled life that includes a real-life tragedy in 1970 Peru.

Sister Pilar is a nun at the Divine Mercy Covenant in Yungay. Part of her duties is to care for a disabled woman named Ana Lucia, who’s been raped three times, with each assault resulting in a pregnancy. Ana Lucia’s first two children live in the home of a local landowner named Don Fernando, “hidden by the convent, taken, and hidden again before they were introduced to the community as the biological children of a wealthy couple.” Ana Lucia’s third and latest pregnancy raises new questions, as Pilar knows that only those in the religious order have a key to the woman’s convent room. That child, born in 1964, is named Santiago, and a novitiate named Isabel Cristina takes care of him; the plan is for her to take him to Don Fernando’s, as well. But after Don Fernando attempts to assault Isabel Cristina, she flees; when she returns and attempts to take Santiago away, tragedy strikes—and that’s merely the beginning of Santiago’s tumultuous young life, which will be marked by a particularly devastating event. Tate’s account of Santiago’s early days is a complicated affair with many figures playing parts in his backstory. Nevertheless, the straightforward prose throughout the book helps guide readers through his trying circumstances. This is the case when, in 1970, the 6-year-old Santiago finds himself in the midst of “the worst natural disaster in Peru’s known history.” Later chapters, in which the protagonist moves to Mexico, feel less intense, and the narration notably lacks urgency after Santiago becomes a tour guide at age 17—a position in which his background in acting “gave him a big advantage in terms of presentation and professionalism.” Still, because readers know the difficulties Santiago faced coming into the world, they’ll likely find the rest of his story intriguing.

A complex and appealingly lucid account of one man’s deeply troubled past.