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«It’s clear from the first lines that this is an incredible book. It’s a novel of brutal and chilling beauty. I am grateful to have read it. It will stay with me always.» Pilar Quintana, author of The Bitch

«The silenced make an effort to return, sometimes finding a way to manifest in sick trees, animals full of bugs, mushrooms or grooves; like the unconscious, they know how to shout their truth to the world. This story crosses elements of the best noir novel with the potency of nonfiction, submerging us in the open wounds of Mexico today. It mixes the poetic and brutal sincerity of our most disturbing dreams which, like loving and terrible mothers, never let go of their beloved children’s bodies. Literature has never been for cowards, and in Uprooted But Never Forgotten, Alma Delia shows how well she knows this.» Dolores Reyes, author of Eartheater

«Alma Delia Murillo has written a delicate and profound novel about a country that is searching for its disappeared. A tender, painful song about memory as the last resort of resistance.» Laura Ferrero, author of Los astronautas

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Raíz que no desaparece

The Trees Know | Alfaguara, 2025

Alma Delia Murillo narrates the collective tragedy of our disappeared and she does so with indignation and pain, but also with love, lucidity, and a vital humor that urges us to keep reading.

When Marcos was a boy he wrote letters to his mom before he left for school. Now he turns up in her dreams, because he wants to tell her where they took him… when he was disappeared. Ada is in a race against time because she fears she will die before finding him, but one thing she is sure of: she has to look for him under a tree.

The palm tree at the heart of Mexico City was cut down and in its place an ahuehuete tree was planted. Now it has died for strange reasons. And a writer wants to write about it, she wants to expose the truth. That’s how she ends up crossing paths with Ada and other mothers who are searching—mothers who are also having dreams about their disappeared children’s whereabouts. And although the DA wants to bury the cases about the dreams, these coordinates pinpoint where the disappeared ended up, with inexplicable precision. The trees see everything. Witnesses of the death that has accumulated in their roots as clandestine graves, and has manifested on their trunks and leaves, they will become the translators of the search, the interlocutors between memory, absence and hope. What if the silenced could speak through the trees?

PRESS

«It’s clear from the first lines that this is an incredible book. It’s a novel of brutal and chilling beauty. I am grateful to have read it. It will stay with me always.» Pilar Quintana, author of The Bitch

«The silenced make an effort to return, sometimes finding a way to manifest in sick trees, animals full of bugs, mushrooms or grooves; like the unconscious, they know how to shout their truth to the world. This story crosses elements of the best noir novel with the potency of nonfiction, submerging us in the open wounds of Mexico today. It mixes the poetic and brutal sincerity of our most disturbing dreams which, like loving and terrible mothers, never let go of their beloved children’s bodies. Literature has never been for cowards, and in Uprooted But Never Forgotten, Alma Delia shows how well she knows this.» Dolores Reyes, author of Eartheater

«Alma Delia Murillo has written a delicate and profound novel about a country that is searching for its disappeared. A tender, painful song about memory as the last resort of resistance.» Laura Ferrero, author of Los astronautas

Raíz que no desaparece

The Trees Know | Alfaguara, 2025

Alma Delia Murillo narrates the collective tragedy of our disappeared and she does so with indignation and pain, but also with love, lucidity, and a vital humor that urges us to keep reading.

When Marcos was a boy he wrote letters to his mom before he left for school. Now he turns up in her dreams, because he wants to tell her where they took him… when he was disappeared. Ada is in a race against time because she fears she will die before finding him, but one thing she is sure of: she has to look for him under a tree.

The palm tree at the heart of Mexico City was cut down and in its place an ahuehuete tree was planted. Now it has died for strange reasons. And a writer wants to write about it, she wants to expose the truth. That’s how she ends up crossing paths with Ada and other mothers who are searching—mothers who are also having dreams about their disappeared children’s whereabouts. And although the DA wants to bury the cases about the dreams, these coordinates pinpoint where the disappeared ended up, with inexplicable precision. The trees see everything. Witnesses of the death that has accumulated in their roots as clandestine graves, and has manifested on their trunks and leaves, they will become the translators of the search, the interlocutors between memory, absence and hope. What if the silenced could speak through the trees?

PRESS

«It’s clear from the first lines that this is an incredible book. It’s a novel of brutal and chilling beauty. I am grateful to have read it. It will stay with me always.» Pilar Quintana, author of The Bitch

«The silenced make an effort to return, sometimes finding a way to manifest in sick trees, animals full of bugs, mushrooms or grooves; like the unconscious, they know how to shout their truth to the world. This story crosses elements of the best noir novel with the potency of nonfiction, submerging us in the open wounds of Mexico today. It mixes the poetic and brutal sincerity of our most disturbing dreams which, like loving and terrible mothers, never let go of their beloved children’s bodies. Literature has never been for cowards, and in Uprooted But Never Forgotten, Alma Delia shows how well she knows this.» Dolores Reyes, author of Eartheater

«Alma Delia Murillo has written a delicate and profound novel about a country that is searching for its disappeared. A tender, painful song about memory as the last resort of resistance.» Laura Ferrero, author of Los astronautas