Blood Ties

They called her The Ogress of Colonia Roma. Julián and I called her Mother. When the writer Ignacio Suárez is sent photographs of two murdered women, mirroring a passage of his very own detective novel, he drops everything to uncover who is responsible. What no-one suspects is that the origin of these crimes lies in the forgotten, real-life story of Felícitas Sánchez, the midwife turned child-killer who became known in the 1940s as "The Ogress of Colonia Roma".Diary entries and newspaper articles come together in this gripping tale to reveal how the woman called Felícitas, who grew up in a small community in La Huasteca, Mexico, became the infamous child trafficker and murderer in the country's capital, and how her long-ago crimes are linked to a wave of killings.Verónica E. Llaca evokes a tale of cursed bloodlines, forcing us to question the origin and inheritance of evil and how far we can truly escape our past.

Verónica E. Llaca was born in Querétaro, Mexico, in 1967. She has worked as a journalist for many years, and was previously a playwright. Llaca is the winner of the Premio Nacional de Novela Negra. She lives now in Madrid and in Querétaro.Mark Fried is an American translator of Latin American literature, primarily known for his translations of the Uruguayan writer Eduardo and the Mexican writer Élmer Mendoza. He has also translated many Spanish novels, including Echoes of the Mexican-American War by Luis Gerardo and Firefly by the Cuban author Severo Sarduy.