Review: The Iron Valley by Ane Odriozola

Review of the book “The Iron Valley” by Ane Odriozola.
By Raquel San Martín Rodríguez

And thriller historic in which drama, violence, love, adventure prevail
Century XVI. A new disappearance. Two opposing guilds. Women willing to impose the only possible law, the law of the valley.

One rainy night in 1577, the charcoal burner Domingo Harria leaves his hamlet towards the Mirandaola forge, where its owners, the Plazaolas, are waiting for him. Asencia, his wife, discovers the next morning that Domingo has not returned home, and raises the alarm. It is not the first time that someone disappears in the valley; It won’t be the last either.

After several days without news, Asencia goes to the forge in search of some clue about her husband’s whereabouts, but, although there they assure her that Domingo never attended the appointment, she is convinced that the Plazaolas are lying. Her guild has never been trustworthy.

Years later, when the entire valley seems to have forgotten Domingo, except for Asencia, Jurdana appears in his life, a young woman of unknown origin who not only keeps a great secret, but is fleeing from a past to which, sooner or later, she will have to face. She just hopes she doesn’t have to do it alone.

My personal assessment:

We enter Euskadi in the 16th century to learn about two stories, that of the disappearance of Domingo Harria in Legazpi and that of the appearance of a girl in the middle of the forest near Vitoria.

The charcoal burner Domingo Harria disappears one rainy night on the way to the Mirandola forge, no one knows what has happened to him, and only his wife Asencia clings to the need to find her husband. From the day of her disappearance, Asencia is certain that the Mirandaola family has the key to knowing what happened to her with Domingo and even the intuition that they are hiding more than one secret about it.

In Vitoria, the shoemaker Ginés Ruíz de Azúa finds a girl in his house who does not speak. Ginés tries to find her family but no one seems to know the little girl. After a while, Ginés decides to adopt her and take care of her along with Gabriela, her neighbor, since Ginés was widowed by her beloved Jurdana, her name that he will name the little girl in her honor.

And this is how these two stories unfold, seeing how the stubborn Ascencia investigates and at the same time forgets her family obligations and on the other hand we will see little Jurdana grow until she becomes a strong and very smart young woman.

But at some point these two stories will intersect, but I won’t be the one to tell you how Jurdana comes into Ascencia’s life, and how these two strong women will become inseparable.

But I am going to tell you that The Iron Valley is a book where you are going to learn a little more about the life of the coal workers and the forges in the north of Spain, the life of the small artisans but above all the life of several Strong women in an environment as beautiful as it is harsh as the Iron Valley.

Ane Odriozola has created great characters, both main characters such as Jurdana, Ascencia and Catalina, and secondary characters such as Grabiela and Ginés, including the three nuns who take care of Jesus. I could be saying a multitude of things about each of them but I prefer that you yourself get to know them and establish that friendship that will remain until you read the last page of this book.

The setting and the documentation process that Ane has carried out is worth mentioning since when reading it it seems that you are in those magnificent settings that these days on my honeymoon I have had the pleasure of being able to see in person.

In conclusion, The Valley of Iron has been a pleasant surprise for me, in fact it slips into my list of three of the best books of the month but it also makes it into the best books read this year. I can only tell you that if you start this book you will not regret it since it has everything you need for a good read, such as good characters, a story that engages you from the beginning, and an ending that surprises you. Don’t think twice and enter the iron valley