Forbidden Love and the Fire of Revolution — A Novel by Fred Blitstein

Poster for The General and the Priest: a priest and a nun in a close embrace before a burning sky, with ruined walls and armed revolutionaries

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A novel inspired by real events · Miami, 1990 · South America, 1960–1975

The story

Where corruption and danger is confronted bya young American & a caring rebel priest.

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Painted illustration of the Coronado highlands

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A country

A beautiful but troubled country of towering volcanoes, mysterious Amazon jungles and vast coffee fields. Indigenous people abused and isolated; a country controlled by the corruption of the aristocratic white leadership. Now confronted by the honesty and caring of the campesino priest.

“The priest is the only man who could threaten the power of the General.”

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The place

The few powerful familiescontrolling Coronado.

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Tap a piece to turn it over. Pin any two and see whether they belong to the same night — some pairs say more together than either says alone.

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The men

Two friends. One country.The tragedy of different paths taken.

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Thirty years in one motion.Watch what happens to both of them.

1970

Coronado, the capital

Nine families own the cane, the courts and the cardinal.

The General

A mountain boy in a borrowed uniform, first in his class.

The Priest

A seminarian who keeps asking why the poor are a separate subject.

The priest is the only man who could threaten the power of the General.

Coronado

Four places on the map.Pick one and look closer.

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Cloud forests above the volcanoes. Barrios raised overnight. Valleys where nobody is supposed to be. Tap a marker on the map.

The front cover of The General and the Priest by Fred Blitstein

The book

One country. Two men who loved it.Only one will survive.

In Coronado, mid-century, Joe, a 22-year-old American, is looking to complete a masters thesis on the movement of displaced Indigenous communities. He meets and befriends a barrio priest who refuses to let the poor stay invisible.

Twenty years later, in a palatial mansion on a Florida island, an exiled dictator is making plans to return to Coronado. Through a telenovela star working with the FBI, a mercenary army is discovered.

Historical adventureInspired by real eventsComing soon

Every road out of Coronado leads back to it.

The author

Fred Blitstein went to South America to complete a masters thesis.He came home with this.

As an idealistic young American in the 1960s, Blitstein arrived in Colombia to study the movement of Latin America's rural Indigenous poor from their mountain villages into desperate urban slums. Instead he was engulfed by the rebellion, corruption and political violence sweeping the region — and by a friendship with a priest who refused to stand aside.

He returned to the United States, earned a Masters and a PhD in Government and Urban Studies from Claremont Graduate University. He then built a consulting practice that took him back across Latin America for decades — the Amazon, the high Andes, the ruins of lost civilizations, the teeming cities of Colombia and Peru. Somewhere in those years, this story was born.

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The cover of The General and the Priest by Fred Blitstein

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The General and the Priest — Forbidden love in the fire of revolution. A novel by Fred Blitstein.

Where corruption and danger is confronted bya young American & a caring rebel priest.

A country

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