Eyes Open

February 15, 2024
Grades 9-12 *Starred Review* Lisbon, Portugal, 1967. Fifteen-year-old S�nia Dias, the first-person narrator of this compelling story in verse, is a poet who specializes in free verse ("I don't have time / to rhyme," she asserts). It's the time of Salazar's dictatorship, and S�nia's Communist boyfriend, Z� Miguel, is apprehended by the PIDE (the secret police) and imprisoned. This is bad enough, but then the family loses their restaurant when somebody reports that they have hired a banned musician to entertain. S�nia's parents then force her to leave school and take a job as a laundress for the hotel where her mother works. "We're the black-ant army of women / prostrate before the machines," she writes bitterly of her new job and coworkers. When Z� Miguel escapes from prison, they have a blissful reunion until he betrays her; S�nia has begun a flirtation with the son of the hotel owner, but will he betray her, too? Strong-willed S�nia becomes a rebel, joining her coworkers in a dangerous strike and reading one of her stirring poems before the crowd. Beautifully and fluidly written, Miller-Lachmann's memorable verse novel captures the setting splendidly, dramatizing the abysmal condition of women under the dictatorship. A fine novel for classroom use and independent reading.

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February 26, 2024
Budding poet Sónia Dias chafes against the confines of her rigid Catholic schooling and patriarchal family in this hard-hitting historical verse novel by Miller-Lachmann (Torch), set in 1967 Lisbon during the authoritarian dictatorship in Portugal. Though taught by the nuns that “obedience = eternal salvation” and that they must follow President António de Oliveira Salazar’s rule, 15-year-old Sónia embraces her own “Free Will” and clings to her dissident artist boyfriend Zé Miguel, despite objections from her strong-willed father. Tensions escalate and the dire consequences of rebellion materialize when the secret police arrest Zé Miguel and then someone reports that a banned political singer performed at Sónia’s family’s restaurant, causing them to lose the business and their home. When Sónia defies her father and visits Zé Miguel in prison, her father forces her to leave school to work in a hotel laundry, a dangerous, oppressive workplace (“I scream in pain, but no one hears me/ over the blank and din of machines”). Employing tightly bound poems, Miller-Lachman weaves the perils of authoritarianism into the dynamics between Sónia and her family, and highlights Sónia’s activist awakening and the power of
protest. Ages 14–up.