Elena Knows

by Claudia Piñeiro

First published 2021

Elena stares at the police report that claims her daughter Rita hanged herself in the church belfry where she volunteered. The official investigation has closed, but Elena knows something is wrong. Despite the tremors and weakness that plague her aging body, she sets out across Buenos Aires on foot. She has a debt to collect, one that might reveal the truth about Rita's death. As Elena walks through the city streets, memories surface of a brief encounter two decades ago that changed everything. Each painful step forces her to question what she really knew about Rita and their complicated relationship. The journey becomes more than a search for answers about her daughter's death. It becomes Elena's reckoning with the choices that shaped both their lives.

Genres: literary-fiction, crime, contemporary, family-drama

Vibes: emotional, intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking

Tropes: unreliable-narrator

Setting: Buenos Aires

Period: 20th-century

143 pages · Paperback · Charco Press

Content warnings: mental-illness

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