It's an unusual story for a young persons' book, but one that Colombian-born author Lyll Becerra de Jenkins says needs telling: the terror of living under dictatorship in Latin America.
Her book, "The Honorable Prison" (Dutton), 1989 winner of the Scott O'Dell Award for historical fiction for children and young adults, is narrated by Marta Maldonado, a teenager whose father is an outspoken critic of a right-wing general who ruled Colombia during the 1950s.Because of the father's writing, the family is sent into internal exile in a small Andean town, where they live under house arrest on a desolate army base.
As Anne Frank did in her diary about hiding from Nazis in Holland during World War II, Jenkins concentrates on the daily tensions of living in close quarters and on the toll taken by uncertainty, terror and near-starvation.
"For me, it's enormously flattering if I can instill in the young adults of America a political consciousness of some sort," said Jenkins, who teaches short story writing at Fairfield University, during a recent interview at her Guilford home.
"The children of America - because, of course, we live in the free world - didn't even know the meaning of tyranny."
Jenkins, whose house is decorated with colorful artwork and haunting masks from Latin America, says her book, aimed at readers 12 and older, is partially autobiographical.
She grew up in Colombia during the time of "la violencia." Her father, lawyer and journalist Luis Becerra Lopez, was imprisoned and sent into exile during the 1950s for criticizing Colombian dictator Gen. Gustavo Rojas Pinilla.
She came to the United States 22 years ago with her American-born husband, whom she met in Bogota when he was working as an engineer for an American oil company.
The mother of five grown children, Jenkins didn't start out to write a children's book. "The Honorable Prison" first appeared as the short story "Tyranny" in The New Yorker and was included in the 1975 volume of "Best American Short Stories."
"Tyranny" ended as a frightened Marta and her family, escorted by government soldiers, arrived at the "honorable prison," their tile-roofed cottage in the Andes.
According to Jenkins, she expanded the story into a novel because people kept asking her what happened to the family.
It was her publisher's idea to market the book as one aimed at young readers, perhaps because the narrator is a teenager.
"The first reaction was, `Why? Why young adults? I am not writing for children,' " she said.
But the enthusiastic reviews the book received and the stacks of fan mail from young people convinced her that the publisher made the right decision.
One teenage girl from New York wrote to thank Jenkins for providing her with the only "inside view of life under a dictatorship." The girl promised to make the book required reading for her own students if she becomes a teacher.
"I often think that had my book been one of the adult novels, (it) would not receive the attention it has received," Jenkins said.
She writes almost exclusively in English and didn't begin her writing career until she emigrated to this country.
"I was very superficial, very interested in traditional things: getting a husband . . . coming to the United States," she said of her youth in Colombia. "I sometimes wonder if I would have been a writer had I not suffered the nostalgia for my country, the need to tell about my country."