Leonor

The Story of a Lost Childhood

Paula Delgado-Kling author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:OR Books

Published:7th Mar '24

Should be back in stock very soon

Leonor cover

  • Author appearances in NYC, Boston, D.C., and Miami. 
  • Targeting coverage in women's magazines, journalism outlets.
  • Pitch television, radio and podcast interviews.
  • Excerpt published in The Evergreen Review 60 days before release.
  • Email promotions to OR Books and Evergreens' combined lists.
  • Bound galleys available.
  • Review copy mailing.

Set in the author’s homeland, Colombia, this is the heartbreaking story of Leonor, former child soldier of the FARC, a rural guerrilla group.

Paula Delgado-Kling followed Leonor for nineteen years, from shortly after she was an active member of the FARC forced into sexual slavery by a commander thirty-four years her senior, through her rehabilitation and struggle with alcohol and drug addiction, to more recent days as the mother of two girls.

Leonor’s physical beauty, together with resourcefulness and imagination in the face of horrendous circumstances, helped her carve a space for herself in a male-dominated world. She never stopped believing that she was a woman of worth and importance. It took her many years of therapy to accept that she was also a victim.

Throughout the story of Leonor, Delgado-Kling interweaves the experiences of her own family, involved with Colombian politics since the 19th century and deeply afflicted, too, by the decades of violence there.

“[A] devastating portrait of unspeakable suffering.”
Kirkus

“[Delgado-Kling] spares no one and condemns no one, writing about the country and the people she loves with honesty, grit and generosity. I couldn’t put this book down.”
—Luis Jaramillo, author of the novel The Doctors Wife

“The contrasts between Delgado-Kling’s and Leonor’s lives are stark, but the author’s capacity to bridge that distance both indicates her ambition as a writer and serves as a reminder of the utter pervasiveness of trauma.”
—Emily Nemens, author of The Cactus League

“A compelling firsthand account of the greed, social neglect, and deliberate misrule that has forced many Latin American children and families to seek a better life in the arms of terrorist groups.”
—Ernesto Quiñonez, author of the novels Bodega Dreams, Changos Fire, and Taina: A Novel

"[A] small but gutting work of memoir-meets-biography"
—Elle

ISBN: 9781682194478

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

250 pages