Under The Chilean Sky

It was a Tuesday morning, the 11th day of September, when Aurora awoke and went to stand in the living room behind her father where he sat watching his morning television. She had no idea that the scenes of smoke and destruction she saw unfolding on that fuzzy screen would set events in motion that would change her life forever. 

The year? 1973. 

The place? Chile, a nation that had been—until that fateful morning—the longest-standing stable democracy in South America.

Under the Chilean Sky follows the lives of Pedro, a copper miner active in the socialist party, Aurora, a young wife and mother, and Javier, a radical student activist, who all come of age during the heady years of Salvador Allende’s presidency before getting caught in Augusto Pinochet’s web of brutality and oppression, and finally emigrating to Cleveland, Ohio as political refugees. 

The themes are broad: justice, freedom, global politics, and the meaning of exile. But the story is intimate and personal—focused on family, love, loss, hope for the future, and a longing for home. 

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