Sira
Sira continues the story of Sira Quiroga begun in The Time in Between (The Seamstress). Sira had left Spain before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War and was living in Morocco as a successful couturier when she was recruited by the British SOE to gather information from Nazi wives. Here she met Marcus, a British spy-diplomat.
In Sira, we follow Sira to Palestine, England, Spain, and back to Morocco. World War II is over, and she has married Marcus, but there will be no settled, quiet life following their daring lives of espionage during the war. Marcus is sent to Jerusalem under the British Mandate overseeing Palestine. Here, Sira abandons her careers as a seamstress, couturier, and spy and takes a supporting role as Marcus’s wife, awaiting the birth of their child, and trying her hand as correspondent for the Palestine Broadcasting Service.
Dueñas effectively gives us a picture of what is taking place during this time of upheaval in 1945 when tens of thousands of Jewish Holocaust survivors flee to Palestine, resulting in conflict with the Arabs and violence. Dueñas’s foreshadowing of an upcoming devastating event builds tension and keeps the pages turning. Sira’s life is upended in the aftermath of this event, and she is repatriated to England. Here she attempts to put her life back together while working for the BBC. The Secret Intelligence Service needs her undercover skills again. Her first mission takes her back to Spain, where she is assigned to infiltrate Eva Perón’s European tour, The Rainbow Tour. The insider details of this tour and Eva Perón are well researched and so fascinating.
Dueñas is very good at interspersing Sira’s backstory into the narrative in Sira as necessary. For a richer reading experience, I recommend reading The Time in Between first. Both novels provide a reader with fresh historical settings and great escapades.
