To Bury the Dead is an investigation of a brutal political murder and fascinating literary feud hidden by the dust of the Spanish Civil War. At the end of 1936, five months after Franco and his allies staged their coup against the Republican government of Spain, José Robles was arrested by undercover police during the increasingly bitter Civil War. Held under suspicion of treason under false charges, his subsequent detention and eventual execution were kept secret by the government. A close friend of Robles, the writer John Dos Passos, vowed to uncover the truth but was met only with a conspiracy of silence. Ignacio Martínez de Pisón picks up the trail where Dos Passos left off, obsessed with discovering the true story. He traces the two men's long friendship, establishes their Republican credentials and tries to discover how and why Robles was killed, an answer that might lead to an explanation of why two of the most famous American writers of the time, John Dos Passos and Ernest Hemingway, both committed anti-fascists, went from being close friends to irreconcilable enemies. A story about real people whose lives were caught up in and shattered by political events, To Bury the Dead exposes power struggles, ideological feuds and deadly political rivalries.
