Paradise in Ashes : A Guatemalan Journey of Courage, Terror, and Hope

"Paradise in Ashes" is a deeply engaged and moving account of the violence and repression that defined the murderous Guatemalan civil war of the 1980s.

In this compelling book, Beatriz Manz - an anthropologist who spent over two decades studying the Mayan highlands and remote rain forests of Guatemala - tells the story of the village of Santa Maria Tzeja, near the border with Mexico.

Manz writes eloquently about Guatemala's tortured history and shows how the story of this village - its birth, destruction, and rebirth - embodies the forces and conflicts that define the country today.