This from The Star newspaper today (paraphrased!):
Antonio Azic has been arrested in Argentina. Why? Because he adopted a baby, now a woman named Laura and about the same age as Ligea was at the beginning of Heart of the Mirage. Laura, you see, was born in a secret prison.
Her parents (Silvia Dameri and Orlando Ruiz) were kidnapped prior to her birth, imprisoned then murdered; their elder two small children were dumped at orphanages without their identities and adopted elsewhere. Their kidnappers were military men serving a military junta who routinely slaughtered people who questioned their ruthless regime. (Throwing them out of aircraft over the sea was a favoured mode of killing.)
Laura was – presumably – raised to believe the right-wing junta were the heroes of Argentina, and those horrible lefties were actually dreadful communists about to plunge the country into anarchy.
She refused to cooperate when a group of grandmothers pressed for DNA testing. But the testing went ahead, and her true identity is now revealed. Her young parents died for their ideals, her siblings were torn from one another – and now she, aged 27, has to sort out what she believes, and just who – if any – are the good guys here.
Does it all sound familiar? I wrote Heart of the Mirage for Laura Luis Dameri, and all the others like her from around the world. And for their parents and those indomitable women, the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo.
OK you knew about it and copied the story, you can’t fool me *g*. It is inconceivable that such things still happen. In fiction, OK, but in real life it is shocking. I just read one of Elizabeth Moon’s books Rules of Engagement with a world of “New Texans” who were a fanatical religious group and who repressed women, shades of what has happened, or is happening now, in Texas where such societies seem to spring up.