Each day Antonio's Mamá tries to get everyone to sit down together to eat, but someone is always busy elsewhere, until the family celebrates a new arrival.

The future of Spain is at stake. Germany and Italy have ensured that Republican forces are starved of weapons and a Franco victory now looks likely. Cristian Ferrar, a Spanish lawyer living in Paris, is a well-connected man. When Ferrar is approached by anti-Franco forces, he readily agrees asked to help smuggle arms into his homeland. Working with de Lyon - an enigmatic man of Slavic descent - Ferrar goes on a quest which will take him from libertine...

"Because of our shared English language, as well as the celebrated origin tales of the Mayflower and the rebellion of the British colonies, the United States has prized its Anglo heritage above all others. However, as Carrie Gibson explains with great depth and clarity in El Norte, the nation has much older Spanish roots--ones that have long been unacknowledged or marginalized. The Hispanic past of the United States predates the arrival of the Pilgrims...

Interweaves the story of the Virgin of Guadalupe and San Juan Diego, the Indian peasant she appeared to in sixteen-century Mexico, with the present-day story of a brother and sister, both archaeologists from Spain, who decide to travel to Mexico to investigate the case of Our Lady of Guadalupe for themselves.