Blood-drenched Beard
SynopsisPlot
The young man’s father, dying, at last tells him the truth about his grandfather – or at least the truth as he knows it. The mean old gaucho was murdered by some fellow villagers in Garopaba, a town on the Atlantic now famous for its surfing and fishing. It was during a Sunday dance at a community hall. The lights went out suddenly and when they came up, his grandfather was lying on the ground in a pool of blood…or so the story goes.
Story
About this book
A young man learns a family secret from his dying father: his grandfather, a gaucho from southern Brazil, was killed by fellow villagers in the coastal town of Garopaba. The murder reportedly took place during a Sunday dance at a community hall. The lights cut out, and when they returned, the old man lay dead on the floor in his own blood. With this fragment of a story as his only lead, the young man sets out for Garopaba to piece together what actually happened.
Garopaba sits on the Atlantic coast of Santa Catarina state, known today for its surf breaks and fishing harbors. Daniel Galera uses this setting to ground a narrative that moves between present-day coastal life and the murky oral history of a small community. The grandson's search for facts about the killing brings him into contact with locals who may remember events differently or prefer not to remember them at all.
The novel operates in a space between family myth and verifiable truth. What the father passed on was a version of events, incomplete and possibly shaped by decades of retelling. Whether the grandson can recover anything closer to what happened is the central tension that holds the story together.
