The Rain in Spain: Life, Love, and Heartbreak in a Military Dictatorship (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798986610122)

In 1973, twenty-year-old Lisa leaves behind her California college sweetheart and everything familiar to spend her senior year at the University of Barcelona. Armed with textbook Spanish and naive optimism, she plunges into a world that will challenge everything she believes about love, freedom, and herself.

Franco's military dictatorship casts a shadow over daily life in ways she never imagined. As a Jewish woman in a deeply Catholic country still haunted by the Inquisition's legacy, Lisa navigates hostile host families, witnesses the brutal spectacle of bullfights, and discovers what it truly means to live without freedom. Through culture shock and heartbreak, satirical art festivals and surprising friendships, she learns that the real education happens outside the classroom.

But the greatest challenge awaits her return home, when she discovers that neither she nor the boyfriend who promised to wait are the same people they were before.

The Rain in Spain is an intimate portrait of a transformative year abroad during one of Spain's most turbulent periods-a story of youthful courage, painful growth, and the unexpected ways foreign shores can lead us home to ourselves.