Excerpt from Cantoras by Caro De Robertis, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

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Flaca was the first to wake up the next morning. She walked to the bare window of the abandoned house and looked out at the landscape around her, so different by day, the great blue ocean visible on all three sides as if they were on a small island, unbound from the rest of Uruguay. Rocks and dry grass, the water beyond, a lighthouse and a smattering of huts in the distance, homes of fishermen and a box of a store somewhere among them. She'd look for it today. She'd go exploring.

Curiosity flared up in her, a rare feeling she'd grown used to suppressing, automatically, without thought. The city, Montevideo, was not a place to be curious, but a place to shrink into yourself and mind your own business, to be careful, to keep your curtains drawn, to keep your mouth shut with strangers because any one of them could report you to the government and then you could disappear, and you could see it in passersby on the street, the flattened gazes, the postures of fear so familiar that they'd become ordinary. She barely noticed, anymore, the constant tightness across her back, which sharpened whenever an army truck lumbered by or a police officer stopped someone in her peripheral vision, then receded back to its low-level presence. Here, now, she became aware of it only as an absence, like the hum of a refrigerator that you only hear when it stops.

To go exploring.

With the others, if they'd come.

She turned to look at them: four sleeping women. Girls. Girlwomen. Was it possible. Were they here. She stared for a long time. Malena lay faceup, mouth slightly agape, eyebrows raised as if her dreams surprised her. About a meter away, Romina curled into herself, like a soldier protecting something— a jewel, a missive—hidden under her shirt. Even asleep, she managed to look tense. Would she ever relax, or would she stay tight as a spring throughout their week here on the beach? There was something comforting about her tension, guilty as this made Flaca feel, considering everything her friend had been through. Romina had always looked out for Flaca, and her vigorous friendship had helped Flaca take risks, take leaps, set out on adventures like this one. Adventures like Anita, who lay just a meter or so away, her luxurious hair pulled into a long, loose braid for sleep. Hair that, if unwound from its braid, fanned out like a lush brown world that could be plunged into, inhaled, a scent to get drunk on. But not now. They weren't alone. Beyond them, at the outer edge of their small group, lay Paz, a chiquilina, almost a child. Perhaps they shouldn't have brought her. Perhaps Romina had been right (as she often was). And yet, Flaca hadn't seen any other choice. When she'd first seen Paz at the butcher shop, she'd seemed so out of her element in the ordinary world that Flaca had felt a stab of recognition. Girls like her had to be saved from themselves. They had to be saved from the horrors of normalcy, the cage of not-being. Which was the cage of this whole country and all the more so for people like them. Paz had reminded Flaca of her own early adolescence. She'd struck up friendly conversation. At first, the girl had shown little outer reaction to the friendliness, answering questions laconically and refusing Flaca's first invitation to come behind the counter for a round of yerba mate. But even then, her eyes had spoken everything.

Flaca walked beyond the half-built walls to gather kindling for a fire. First order of business: heat the water for yerba mate. That was breakfast. She'd kept just enough water aside last night for a good long round of mate for everyone. They'd have to go find more water later today. As she arranged the kindling in the ring of stones she'd assembled yesterday, she gave thanks, again, to her father for having taught her how to light a fire, all those parrilla Sundays, even though, almost every time, he bemoaned the fact that he had no son to share his skills with. "Three children and no boys," he'd say, shrugging, "ah well, what can you do about fate?" She, Flaca, was the only one who showed any interest in learning to get the flames going for long enough to turn the logs to embers over which the meat could roast all afternoon. Flames up, embers down and glowing. She wasn't his ideal student, but still, she knew that some fathers would never teach a daughter, that she was lucky, that she wouldn't be able to build this fire now if her father had been a lesser man.

Excerpted from Cantoras by Carolina De Robertis. Copyright © 2019 by Carolina De Robertis. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.