Fans of Chanel Cleeton's historical fiction have gotten to know the families she writes about. With OUR LAST DAYS IN BARCELONA, we revisit some of her characters while meeting new ones in a dual narrative set in 1936 and 1964.

In the earlier timeline, Alicia Perez has fled to Barcelona from Cuba with her daughter, Isabel, to stay with her parents after finding out about her husband's infidelity. Yet when Isabel travels to Barcelona in search of her sister, Beatriz, in 1964, she sees a photo of her mother, herself and an unknown man at a cafe in Barcelona. Strangely, when questioned, Alicia adamantly insists that they have never been to Barcelona. We also meet Alicia’s cousin, Rosa, whose own situation mirrors the personal quandaries that both Alicia and Isabel face.

"Book clubs that discuss OUR LAST DAYS IN BARCELONA will have a plethora of themes and topics to explore. Feminism, women in history, war, the fight for independence and our role in society are all ideas that will engender some serious conversations."

What follows is a tortuous journey by both mother and daughter, three decades apart, to find their place in the world and how they want to live in it. Almost a century after Alicia's escape from Cuba in search of freedom and a life of her choosing, we see the rights of women being chiseled away by Supreme Court decisions and state legislation. Will we end up as we were before the 1970s, when a woman wasn't allowed to even open a bank account without her husband's permission? Alicia and Isabel feel beholden to their spouses, who hold the power and the money in the relationship. Beatriz, on the other hand, is independent and answers only to herself.

Cleeton’s tender narration makes clear the warring factions of our (women's) emotions as we make decisions that will affect social standing, not letting our family down, feelings of helplessness, and our own best interests. There is also the idea that women of a certain class are held to a higher standard as to whom they are "allowed" to marry. Young men also are expected to marry within their social class.

OUR LAST DAYS IN BARCELONA becomes brutal and graphic as we witness, through Alicia's eyes, the bombing of Guernica, Spain, by the Germans during the Spanish Civil War. I had not read much about this as novels set during this time usually focus on other European cities and how WWII affected them. It's elucidating, fascinating and devastating. While we witness the decimation of Guernica firsthand, we also see it through Isabel's eyes decades later as she views Picasso's painting, Guernica, on exhibit.

Cleeton's writing is mostly focused on action and dialogue to move the plot forward. But she also expresses complex thoughts extremely effectively. Here she writes about the audacity of creating art and hoping that others will find meaning in it: "Perhaps that's what [authoritarians] fear the most, the power of speech, the power of art to galvanize the will of the people, the power of some positive creation to counterbalance the destruction they have wrought. To conquer, to destroy, you must subvert and eradicate the will of the people: their joy, their spirit, their hope."

Book clubs that discuss OUR LAST DAYS IN BARCELONA will have a plethora of themes and topics to explore. Feminism, women in history, war, the fight for independence and our role in society are all ideas that will engender some serious conversations. It's a lovely and entertaining read, but it's also so much more.