LIES

the long version

"As far as the outside world is concerned, Isabel Garcia Luna is dead. Following a boat accident in an isolated part of the Guatemalan jungle, the anthropologist and mother of three has fallen victim to a case of mistaken identity. Isabel is not dead - she is very much alive and hiding in a remote shack in the jungle. But she isn't ready to tell the world about her continuing existence; in fact, she's not sure whether she ever will. The news of her own death is especially ironic because as an anthropologist, Isabel's speciality is the study of death rituals." "Serena, Isabel's daughter, studies weather. Her father has Alzheimer's and with her mother now supposedly dead, she is trying to write the family history before it is lost altogether. Above all, she is obsessed with the story of Simon, her father's father who survived a shipwreck and three days at sea before being rescued. The story of his life has become a family legend, together with the tales her father told about the Battle of Formigues and the story of Li Po. Ever since she was a child, Serena has been tantalised by these stories, always asking questions, turning the 'facts' over in her mind, always trying to piece the truth together. Yet the irony is that she isn't investigating the one story she really should - that of her mother's death."--BOOK JACKET.