By Bill Littlefield

Among this novel’s merits is its powerful celebration of the will to live, dovetailed with an evocation of the love members of a family have for one another, even under the most brutal and apparently hopeless circumstances.

Río Muerto by Ricardo Silva Romero. Translated from the Spanish by Victor Meadowcroft. World Editions, 188 pages, $19.99.

In an afterword written for the English translation of his novel, Ricardo Silva Romero writes that in Colombia, his native land, “because of our culture of annihilation, our indolent elites, and our proliferating gangs financed by the drug business – we are commemorating 66 years of counting victims.”

In Río Muerto, the gangs, the corrupt authorities, and the violence are thriving, which may be one reason a review of the novel in Diario de Paz Colombia called it “a portrait of Colombia turned into a book.” But the most vital characters in this story assert a brave and lonely alternative to the narrative’s picture of the “culture of annihilation”. Given the widespread duplicity of the global economy, the themes dramatized in this energetic story, with its bittersweet magic realist trappings, are not limited to a single country. They are universal.

As Rio Muerto opens, Salomon Palacios, a mute, is murdered outside his home by right wing assassins who regard him as “a rat,” allegedly because he has helped one of their enemies move some furniture. Palacios, married and the father of two young boys, has made a habit of helping everybody who needs his old truck, regardless of their political affiliation. Romero’s narrator notes where Salomon Palacios went wrong: he “had made the mistake of behaving like a good man with everyone.”

After a grim and painful period of mourning for her husband, Señora Hipolita Palacios determines that there is no point in carrying on as a family of three. She insists that there is “no more the three of us,” because “the joy was in the four of us.” She announces to her sons that they must find the men responsible for Salomon’s death. By doing so, they will ensure that they, too, will be murdered. They will join their father in an afterlife that will be an improvement on what will be their agonizing future. The younger son, Segundo, is particularly dubious of this nihilistic plan, but he follows along and hopes for the best.

Señora Hipolita’s will is a powerful force, and she might have succeeded in her suicidal charge were it not for the ghost of her husband, who hangs around the family, mostly taking the form of wind or smoke. With the help of a woman said to be a witch, the spirit, who feels guilty about letting his family down because he was murdered, sends Segundo a message. It contains a message he never would have delivered when he was alive: “Take note. Don’t go getting yourself killed like I did.”

One triumph of Río Muerto is the author’s powerful celebration of the will to live, dovetailed with his evocation of the love members of a family have for one another, even under the most brutal and apparently hopeless circumstances. Belen del Chami, the town where the novel is set, is “not much better than hell.” It doesn’t appear on any map and, as mentioned, chicanery and bloodshed are rampant. But in this sewer, ruled by murderous thugs, unscrupulous and lecherous policemen, and a hypocritical priest, lived a man who was “the same with every person he met along his journey: to all he bowed his head, to all of them he’d raised his palm to wave goodbye.” The empathy and service embodied in Salomon Palacios survives his murder and will save his family.

Romero is well-known as a novelist, journalist, screenwriter and film critic in Colombia, but Río Muerto is the first of his works to have been translated into English. Let’s hope World Editions continues to make his extraordinary fiction available to readers here and elsewhere. He not only has a brilliant knack for creating multivalent characters, but has found a way to help readers understand that people are people wherever they are. And to dramatize his belief that the best human qualities are also the most necessary — and will survive even the most determined efforts to crush them.

Bill Littlefield’s most recent novel is Mercy, Black Rose Writing, 2022.