Purity of Blood by Arturo Perez- Reverte
An intimate tale with a backdrop of sweeping events, Purity of Blood tells the story of an old soldier and the young boy he adopts in the troubled Spain of Velasquez - the 1600s, when Spain was sinking into corruption, royal ineptitude, and the horrors of the Inquisition. Captain Alatriste is a soldier-turned-sword-for-hire who protects his privacy and isolation fiercely, but finds the chink in his armor against sorrow and vulnerability when he takes on the son of a dead friend as a ward. Young Inigo, the narrator of the story, matches Alatriste’s gruff love with an independent character and intense loyalty.
When Alatriste embarks on a commission to rescue a young converso woman from a convent/brothel, he is betrayed and trapped. He escapes, but Inigo is captured and delivered to the Inquisition as a sympathizer with Jews. The story of Alatriste’s struggle to free him touches on the fear-driven life of the Jewish conversos, never able to be Catholic enough for the Inquisition, and the lengths that men in power will go to protect their often spurious claims to purity of blood.
Perez-Reverte is a lyrical writer whose weakness is a grand send-up to an ultimately inconsequential tale, but this story escapes that in its details of the unwanted but unstinting love of a war-beaten man for a brave boy.