First Confession by Latin American writer Montserrat Fontes

The idea of the Christian confessional and its ultimate inability to give spiritual or societal healing in the presence of perpetual societal injustice and class inequities gives rise to the major themes of the novel First Confession by the Latin American author Montserrat Fontes. In the novel, two children, the privileged cousins Andrea Durcal and Victor Durcal, are about to make their first confession at the end of the summer of 1947. They are living on the Mexican border, living a carefully controlled life "designed" by their mothers, a life where servants serve, and the wills and the needs of the upper classes of Mexican society hold sway.

But then, sin and disorder intrudes upon their family's neatly structured existences. First, their maid Alicia is murdered. Then, Andrea's father accidentally runs over a night watchman, a man of the lower orders. Seeing...
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