L H May

A Candle For Juanita Poma L H May

Jim Hiram, an international law and investment attorney in Lima, Peru, makes a last journey South to Arequipa where he lived some fifteen years before. The nation is emerging from an internecine civil war, but his sentimental journey is complicated when he sees a Wanted notice for a MRTA, Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru, terrorist suspect named Juana Poma. Neither first nor last name are uncommon there, and though he knew a girl by that or a similar name, he can't identify her by the grainy photo in the paper. His partner, Helen Seymour, has decided to return to Philadelphia to help her mother who's suffering from Alzheimer's, and she didn't want him to make the trip to the sierra, which she views as a savage region. However, his curiosity leads him to extend his visit to return to the old barrio and into the dark side of the civil war, from which their gated community in Lima has insulated him.