Charles Wheeler

The Crying of the Wind Charles Wheeler

' What need have you to dread the monstrous crying of wind?'-W. B. Yeats Buenos Aires, 1939: Anna McGeoch arrives in Argentina from Scotland to join her brother and his wife and work on a Christian mission among the Matacos Indians. But within hours of her arrival she learns that her brother has been killed. Anna stays on in Buenos Aires and is welcomed into the glamorous lifestyle of the Hurlingham Club's polo-playing community. When she marries Tito Cadoret, a life of wealth and happiness seems to lie ahead. But, unknown to Anna, Cadoret is already in thrall to a corrupt and powerful lawyer, and as the years pass, he and his family are drawn ever deeper into a dark world of murder, blackmail, and the 'Dirty War'. When, in 1982, the British Task Force sails for the Falklands, Anna's daughter Nikki sails with it as a naval nurse aboard a hospital ship. After the battles are over, she tends the wounds of British and Argentine sailors and soldiers, and sees at first hand the tragedy and futility of armed conflict. As in the case of so many women down the centuries, Anna and Nikki suffer much in order to keep the family together, and the price they pay for personal freedom is high.