The hero of my novel ‘ Madrina de Guerra’ the one I have been working on for three years, he died Monday, November 20th. Not the character that I’ve molded and shaped with my words but the real blood and flesh hero who inspired me to write this novel, Enrique Leon.
Even though it is fiction that I’m writing the hero can be recognized as Enrique. He is the hot-headed teenager who speaks out against Franco’s oppression of freedom then is forced to flee by foot over the Pyrenees. He’s the adventurer who joined the French Foreign Legion, became a paratrooper in Indochina and then a prisoner of war. The character in my novel can be seen flirting with the ladies, arguing passionately his politics, drinking boisterously with his comrades, and writing love letters to a fifteen year old Mexican girl.
In my world truth and fiction can reside together. Enrique and Teressa have given me the gift of their story and as a writer I have been given the license to re-write the parts I want to.
In “Madrina de Guerra’ the hero is united with his heroine early in his life, he never gets sick, and he never dies.
Enrique Leon, lives on forever.
In a twist of fate Enrique’s day of departure from this world happens to be the same date Franco himself died on in 1975. In my fictional happily ever after world it makes me smile to think Enrique has once again met up with Franco and his adventurers continue.
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Your words, Chris, are good food for thought: "In my world truth and fiction can reside together. Enrique and Teressa have given me the gift of their story and as a writer I have been given the license to re-write the parts I want to."
I see an essay about life forming from these words.
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