Nineteen eighty-nine. Central America is a war zone. In Nicaragua, the Sandinista government is threatened with invasion by the United States while revolutionary forces in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala battle U.S. supported military governments. Fighting with the Mayan army of Guatemalan Unity is a gay North American named Patrick Day. His identity makes him useful to the leadership, but his loyalty is tested when he is lured into an assassination plot with terrible consequences.
(John Brown Books,1995)
Praise for Days of the Dead:
“… a fierce and highly readable thriller with a disturbing edge.” Oregon Statesman-Journal
“A fast-moving political thriller with a gay romance at its heart… It is an extremely compelling read.” Screaming Hyena, e-Journal of Queer Writing and Review
“… a tremendous and gripping novel where the reader finds the unexpected… should be required reading for all who wish to battle cynicism. It kicked me right out of my revolutionary armchair and it looks like I’m headed for the streets.” Michele Ascione, Brooklyn Metro Times
“Not a book for the faint of heart, Days of the Dead portrays characters passionate for politics and for love. In the ranks of American writers sympathetic to oppressed peoples, Agnes Bushell writes unflinchingly of the horrors of war and the terrible tension of those who kill for their ideals.” Merle Drown, Maine in Print
“Bushell paints a vivid, multi-layered portrait of intersecting cultures and world views: Mayan, Hispanic and American; revolutionary and Contra, and homo- and heterosexual…. Bushell has important things to say, and she says them in a prose style which is often no less than poetic lyricism.” Nick Humez, Maine Sunday Telegram
“Days of the Dead grabs the reader by the throat. With a spellbinding mixture of the fabulous and the terrifying, Bushell illuminates the tortured souls of Central American revolutionaries. This is a must-read book as impossible to put down as it is to forget.” Arturo Arias, Guatemalan novelist and critic
“It is in the twilight zone where fact and fancy slowly tango into the sunset that “Days of the Dead” does its best dancing… Bushell has written a book that nails the reader every bit as much as once did Robert Stone, another writer of high-tension, deviant, political thrillers.” John Ross, journalist and author of Rebellion from the Roots.
