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 first published novel; a story that recounts, through numerous witnesses, the abuse that she was subjected to by a relative and that became a literary, social and political phenomenon in her country and beyond. In 2021 she published her second book Donde no hago pie (Where There is No Standing) which narrates the legal process the author went through after accusing her perpetrator of abuse.

Maureen Shaughnessy’s translations from Spanish include works by Hebe Uhart, Nora Lange, Margarita García Robayo, and Luis Nuño. She has also translated Guadalupe Urbina’s Maya folktales, as well as several Cañari legends. Her translations have been published by The Paris Review, Brick, AGNI, Words Without Borders, World Literature Today, The Brooklyn Rail, and Asymptote . She has a translation of a chapbook of poetry by Nurit Kasztelan forthcoming from Cardboard House Press. Raised in Portland, she now lives in Bariloche, Argentina.