Voices From Silence is a kind of sequel to Unger's El Yanqui, set some 15 years later. In that time, Argentina has suffered under an oppressive regime & is now trying to heal itself. But scars remain, and Unger's American protagonist has returned to Argentina to help the family that once adopted him as a son search for the 2 sons who have disappeared. Thus Voices From Silence deals with the macrocosm of the Argentine political tragedy through the microcosm of one family's story. But Unger does not resort to cheap theatrics in this novel. This is a scrupulously realistic account that is all the more dramatic because it resists melodrama. The horrors in Voices From Silence are all too real, and as the truths emerge through the efforts of the Benevento family to discover what happened to their lost sons, the insiduous & mundane quality of those horrors (each the result of a thousand minor failings that in themselves could never amount to much) makes them all the more troubling to witness. But Unger's novel is unflinching, and we are forced to witness acts & consequences more damaging than any melodramatic cataclysm. In this sense, Voices From Silence joins the ranks of Heart of Darkness and the works of Elie Wiesel in portraying how ordinary lives can be trapped by the very ordinary nature of oppression. Art is meant to affirm life, and Voices From Silence, by giving witness to the silenced, bravely affirms the lost value of the disappeared lives of anyone who has fallen victim to an oppression born of their fellow citizens

If you've ever been to Argentina or wondered about this country's mystique and charm as well as it's silent horrors; If you are an Argentine- American or an American-Argentinian, you'll be caught in a whirlpool of memories, backflashes, cooincidental identifications, and you'll almost think the book is about you. Unger is not a master, but a keen observer and a captivating storyteller. I couldn't put El Yanqui down and finished it in a day.

"Leaving the Land" by Douglas Unger is a sad book. It doesn't make you laugh much and it has few moments of inspiration. But it is nonetheless an entrancing and all-too-real portrait of the untidy death of a way of life in America. The book focuses on a farming community in South Dakota that is falling victim to changing economics and technological progress in the mid-20th century. As the farmers are forced to sell out and move on, the small town they revolve around begins to die, too. The story focuses on the farmer's daughter, Marge, who, as a young woman, has dreams of something better than herding turkeys all day long, but mistakenly links her happiness to finding a man. This proves to be a big mistake, of course, and she ends up hanging on in the small dying town. Midway through "Leaving the Land," the narrator changes to Marge's son, who recounts the town's demise and his mother's and his travails. Anyone who has enjoyed Kent Haruf's celebrated "Plainsong" will find "Leaving the Land" a worthy read. "Plainsong" is a tad better, primarily because of its comic sensibilities, but they are companion novels in the way they profile a dying way of life in the Great Plains. Like Haruf, Unger is an authoritative voice. It's clear that he personally has experienced many of the things that happen in the book, from working on a farm to experiencing the death of a community.