Why Did You Come Back Every Summer

A fractured account of family abuse, secrets, and the cost of pursuing the truth.

In the most private spaces, the most intimate betrayals occur. Belén López Peiró places us squarely in the tenderest of times--young teenagehood, in a home about to be ruptured by sexual assault. In this home, for this young woman, your assailant is your uncle, and also a police commissioner. The people who shelter you will reject you: your mother is his sister-in-law, your beloved aunt his wife and your cousin and friend his daughter. And the truth of what happened will depend entirely on you.

Why Did You Come Back Every Summer is a document of uncertainty, self-doubt, and the appearance of progress when there is none. A chorus of voices interrupt and overtake each other; interviews and reports are filed. The truth will be heard but how and by whom? Loyalties will shift and slip. And certain questions have no easy answers. What do you owe to your family? What do they owe you? How far will you go to get yourself back?

Belén López Peiró studied journalism and communication sciences in Buenos Aires University and has recently completed an MA in Creative Writing at the Barcelona's Pompeu Fabra University. She currently coordinates non-fiction writing workshops with a gender perspective. Why Did You Come Back Every Summer is her debut novel. It received rave reviews, and has become a literary, social and political phenomenon in her country and beyond. In 2021 she published her second book Donde no hago pie (Nowhere to Stand) which narrates the legal process the author went through to bring her abuser to justice.

Maureen Shaughnessy is a writer and translator from Spanish. Her published translations include works by Sara Gallardo, Hebe Uhart, and Nurit Kasztelan. Her translations have been published by Archipelago Books and Cardboard House Press, and featured in The Paris Review, Brick, World Literature Today, LALT, AGNI, WWB and Asymptote. Her forthcoming translations include a novel by Lucía Lijtmaer and microfictions by Leila Sucari. Raised in Oregon, she now lives in Bariloche, Argentina.