SILENCIO

The midwife carries 16 year-old Mercedes’ son from a delivery room and that is the last time that she sees him alive. His first cries haunt her but her family refuse to acknowledge the possibility that her child still lives. Their silence represses her young spirit. Ten years later, a woman named Carmen contacts Mercedes, now a journalist, with stories of newborns who have disappeared in mysterious circumstances similar to her own. When Mercedes embarks on an investigation into baby trafficking, she must fight powerful enemies to reveal the truth – so powerful, in fact, that her own life is at risk. Using her expertise, she unmasks a baby-trafficking network that has spanned decades and moved thousands of children out of Spain. She antagonises key figures when she unearths conspiracies arising from the bloody periods of Spain’s modern history, exposing a criminal underworld hiding in the government, health services and church. Mercedes becomes their target as they seek to silence her exposé – and her life, and the lives of her loved ones, come under perilous threat...

Silencio is L.A. BERRY’s first novel. An alumnus of the Faber Academy, she writes short stories and blog posts, including for the Making-Hay-Festival Wordpress site in 2015. She left her employment as a nurse/midwife to embark on a sailing adventure
and now lives between Dorset and Spain.