January
by: Sara Gallardo (Author), Frances Riddle (Translator)

Softcover. NY, Archipelago Books, 1st transl. thus, 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 114 pages. "This debut novel--by an acclaimed Argentinean writer, and first published in 1958--centers on a sixteen-year-old who becomes pregnant after an assault by an older man. Setting the story in the sweltering heat of Argentina's Pampas, Gallardo re-creates the world of ranchers and missionaries from the perspective of the girl, with her adolescent confusion and private sense of guilt. Gallardo juxtaposes her solitary desperation--she visits a local medicine woman for an abortion, and gallops recklessly on horseback to induce a miscarriage--with the conservative Catholic society that closes ranks against her." Clean, bright copy.