Through war and its
aftermaths, a woman fights to keep her daughters safe. Like peasants through the ages, she desperately
slashes and burns in order to make a place for her children to return to.
A country girl sees her
village sacked and her beloved father disappeared. She is taken to the
mountains to join the guerrillas, who force her to give up the baby she conceives.
Surviving the rebellion, and now a woman, she sets out to find her daughter,
travelling across the Atlantic with meagre resources. She returns to a
community in which civilians, the militia and the ex-guerrilla fighters have to
live together in a society riddled with distrust, fear and hypocrisy.
Hernandez’ narrators have
the level gaze of ordinary women reckoning with extraordinary hardship.
Denouncing the ruthless machismo of combat with quiet intelligence, Slash and Burn creates a suspenseful, slow-burning
revelation of rural life in the aftermath of political trauma.