Blood Secret   by Kathryn Laskey    $11.95

Abandoned by her irresponsible mother, Geraldine Luna goes to live with her great aunt in New Mexico (USA).  She discovers her own family's history in an old trunk hidden in her great-aunt's cellar.  In this trunk are mementos from her Spanish ancestors - Jews who suffered, generation after generation for 500 years under the Inquisition, moving from city to city in 1391, to Portugal, then to Mexico where the brutality followed them - right to 1826.  After generations of spiritual subterfuge, these Jews forgot they were Jews and became practising Catholics, yet clung unwittingly to Jewish customs, like lighting a candle on Friday night.  This books portrays the crushing effects of those blood-saturated centuries and the dawning realisation of a teenage girl of how this has affected her.  Masterful!   Ages 14 - 18 yrs.