The Weight of All Things

The Weight of All Things is a novel about war - and the lunacy of it - seen through the eyes of a nine-year-old boy. The battleground is El Salvador. Along with thousands of others, Nicolás and his mother have crowded into the capital's cathedral to pay homage to the slain Archbishop Oscar Romero. When gunfire erupts, his mother throws herself atop Nicolás to protect him and is killed. When the medics arrive to take her body away, the boy believes she is only wounded. In the mêlée of the moment, he loses sight of her. And so begins his search for her that ends in still another massacre, and a heroic gesture by the boy who comes to understand that in war, there are no winners, and that the ultimate losers are the innocent caught in the middle.