House of Miranda Alba: Part I

The House of Miranda Alba is the story of the Burleigh family, and how it came disastrously apart during the turbulent years of the Cold War. They lived in the tranquil city of Brussels; four sisters whose father, a U.S. diplomat and whose mother, a Chilean journalist, kept them protected from the political and social changes of the world outside. But their happy existence changed when Rosa, the eldest, decided to continue her studies in Chile. Enamored of politics, interested in Socialism, in love with an ardent young Socialist, her decision threw the family into crisis. Their distress was mirrored in the world; a place fraught with anxiety over Communism, where fears became paranoia and paranoia became complicit with violence. Rosa died, a victim of the fanaticisms of the Cold War. But there was something in her death that the family could not understand; something related perhaps to the fanaticisms of an earlier age; linked to the violence of beliefs from our distant past.