My Barbara | Some Good Books

A tribute to those who did not want the Civil War

My Barbara is a love story: that of a doctor who did not want war, and who fought, like so many others, to resist. For not letting herself be swept away by madness and for surviving in a world that was not for her. It is a cry for peace, life and memory. It is a fight for freedom.

García Lorca, money from the sugar factories and love are intertwined in My Bárbara, by Laura Andreu, a historical novel about those who did not want the Civil War but suffered it

• The story, which takes place in Granada before and after the Civil War, reflects on the causes and complexity of the conflict through characters who wanted, above all, to avoid the conflict.

• The novel portrays the time of the sugar boom in an Andalusia still marked by caciquismo and in which Federico García Lorca’s family played an important role.

• The protagonist of the story, Barbara, is a fighting doctor who tries to resist and get ahead in a world that was not prepared for women like her.

In the spring of 1917, Barbara, the orphaned niece of a sugar magnate, suddenly changes the dark and uninspiring world of a French orphanage for one flooded with the light of Andalusia when she goes to live in a stately home in Granada with a family he didn’t know he had.

Bárbara and her family will witness a unique Granada and years full of ideas, poetry and sugar, a vibrant and luminous time, full of hope but also turbulent, which little by little will darken until finally extinguished with the explosion of the Civil War. For Bárbara, the start of the war will bring with it an event that will be the final twist that will mark her destiny.

The character of Federico García Lorca has an important weight in the plot, since he appears as a friend of the protagonist in those years of youth. This relationship inspired by some of the friendships that the poet had with women, like Emilia Llanos, in real life.

My Barbara tells the story of a doctor who did not want war and who fought, like so many others, to resist, to not let herself be carried away by madness and to survive heroically in a world that was not for her. The novel reflects on the causes and complexity of the conflict, paying tribute to the victims, regardless of which side they belonged to.

This work represents the literary debut of Laura Andreu Noguera (Torrevieja, 1997), graduated in Social and Cultural Anthropology and master’s degree in Physical and Forensic Anthropology from the University of Granada, studies that she directed towards their application in the areas of collective memory and violations of Human Rights.

Rooted in this focus of interest and with her literary inclinations distributed between narrative, poetry and essay, My Bárbara was born, the result of the years lived in Granada, the exploration of its geography and its history, and her deep fascination for her.