1811. In ten seconds, Inés, a healer from Tilcara, must decide whether to intervene or look the other way. That choice could change the course of the war of independence.
Inés inherited a gift the women of her blood call Unquy: something that lets her glimpse what others keep silent - fear, intention, whatever each person carries within. Her mother spent her life hiding it. Inés was prepared to do the same.
Until that morning. In the market at Tupiza she sees a man pursued by royalist soldiers and understands that what he carries under his arm could cost many lives.
The papers hold the plan for the royalist advance descending from Alto Perú toward the Quebrada de Humahuaca. To get them to Güemes, Inés enters a clandestine network that crosses the Quebrada, the forced exodus of Jujuy and the war of the montoneras: healers, traders, muleteers and messengers - women who move information where men cannot go.
The man from the market has a name, Sebastián Aguirre, and learned to hide in a different way. Between loyalty, danger and the weight of what they inherited, an adult love grows between them: chosen, in full awareness of what is at stake.
With the restraint of Río de la Plata realism and the emotional force of Latin American historical fiction, Unquy tells the story of the women who sustained independence from the margins.
For readers of Isabel Allende, María Dueñas and Geraldine Brooks, in the literary tradition of Antonio Di Benedetto and Selva Almada.