It will bear your name, by Sonsoles Ónega

After becoming the bestselling author of 2024 with *The Maid's Daughters*, winner of the 2023 Planeta Prize, Sonsoles Ónega returns with a powerful love story and a moving tribute to the anonymous women who dedicated their lives to writing. The author crafts a protagonist worthy of the greatest literary heroines, who, through silence and writing, takes control of her life and encourages other women to recognize their worth and dignity.

“I have always believed that women have an obligation to rebel against what we perceive as unjust and to promote change. No one will do it for us. In *It Will Bear Your Name*, I discovered how much famous women fought, but also how many anonymous women refused to tiptoe through life or kneel before their circumstances,” the author notes.

The novel

It Will Bear Your Name takes place in the summer of 1882 in Comillas. The discovery of a woman's body on the beach shakes the town. Amid whispers, accusations, and family secrets, young Mada Riva is accused of murder. To protect the family name and honor, her own family signs her own death warrant: Mada must disappear without a trace.

She arrives in a chaotic and fascinating Madrid where she must confront loneliness and oblivion. Her refuge is a home for humble girls, but her talent for reading and writing leads her to work for Don Gonzalo, who is captivated not only by her beauty but also by the rebellious spirit that will guide her life. In a society that silences women, Mada will raise her voice and, amidst shadows of the past, discover that it is possible to love without fear and reclaim her name.

Sonsoles reconstructs the social, moral, and political pulse of late 19th-century Spain, a country caught between tradition and modernity. And without sacrificing historical accuracy, with an evocative and deeply moving style, she presents us with a protagonist who confronts her own life and finds in creation "redemption, shield, and cure."

This novel is a social and emotional portrait of Madrid, a city that oscillates between wealth and humility.

It will bear your name  is published in Spain (Spanish and Catalan), the USA and 18 Latin American countries.

A tribute to silenced women

It Will Bear Your Name is a beautiful and necessary tribute to the women who have never had a voice, those who could not publish writings in their own name, and those who did manage to forge their own path in their own eyes and in the eyes of others. It belongs to all of them. Thus, the author highlights both the hidden work of those who have worked diligently to escape poverty and some influential women writers. This is the case of Emilia Pardo Bazán, a central figure in the protagonist's imagination, a fighter for women's rights and a model of intellectual independence for Mada. Or Faustina Sáenz de Melgar, a writer, editor, and journalist who founded the Ladies' Artistic and Literary Athenaeum, through which she advocated for the necessary education for women.

Sonsoles Ónega

Sonsoles Ónega, a Madrid-born author from 1977, is a journalist and a graduate of the San Pablo CEU University in Madrid. She has worked for CNN+ and Noticias Cuatro, and was a parliamentary correspondent for Informativos Tele 5 from 2008 to 2018. Between 2018 and 2022, she presented various television programs on Mediaset, such as Ya es mediodía and Ya son las ocho. Since October 2022, she has hosted the successful magazine program Y ahora Sonsoles on Antena 3.

She is the author of the novels Calle Habana, esquina Obispo; Donde Dios no estuvo; Encuentros en Bonaval; Nosotras que lo quisimos todo; Después del amor (Fernando Lara Novel Prize 2017) and Mil besos prohibidos. Her previous novel, Las hijas de la criada, was awarded the Planeta Prize 2023.