PIETY

A neo-rural coming-of-age novel about an eighteen-year-old torn between leaving his village behind and helping his disabled uncle search for the woman he loves—a journey that will force him to choose between the future
he dreams of and the life he cannot escape.

Ramiro is eighteen and standing at a crossroads. He has the opportunity to leave his village behind and move to Madrid to attend university. But at home remain his father and his uncle Amador, a disabled man he has always looked after more like a brother than an uncle. When Piedad—the woman Amador
loves—vanishes without a trace, the two set out across the mountains of León in search of her. Their journey takes them along forgotten roads, through remote village bars, and across landscapes seemingly untouched by time. Along the way, Ramiro must confront a question that will shape the rest of
his life: should he leave and begin anew, or stay and carry the burdens that no one else can bear?
Narrated by a rural Spanish counterpart to Holden Caulfield,Piety is a coming-of-age novel as raw and unforgiving as the landscape from which it emerges, yet also a tender and luminous road story about family, masculinity, and growing up in a rural world where women are conspicuously absent. Above
all, it is a novel about the weight of choices—and the lives they make possible or leave behind.