Painted cover illustration: an American traveller looks out over a Coronado valley with an erupting volcano, a stone pyramid and a colonial cathedral

A gripping story of faith, power and resistance — where a priest, a general, and an outsider collide in a land torn by corruption and hope.

Fred Blitstein

The Generaland the Priest

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A novel inspired by real events · Miami, 1990 · South America, 1960–1975

The front cover of The General and the Priest by Fred Blitstein

The book

One country. Two men who loved it.Thirty years of consequences.

Joe, a 22-year-old Jewish-American graduate student from Miami, arrives in the fictional Latin American country of Coronado in the mid 20th century. Initially welcomed by his friends, the wealthy Santiago and Marta, Joe's journey takes a dramatic turn when he encounters padre Gabriel Hurtado, a young priest dedicated to uplifting displaced campesinos in his barrio, Casa Libertad. As Joe becomes entrenched in Gabriel's mission, he uncovers corruption within the Church and the aristocracy.

Years later, after Gabriel rises to the presidency of Coronado, Joe returns to Miami, only to be drawn back into the fray by Alejandra Valero, a telenovela actress working with the FBI. She reveals that General Joaquín González, a brutal ex-dictator Joe once opposed, is plotting a comeback from exile with a mercenary army. As Joaquín allies with the corrupt Cardinal Santo Domingo, Joe devises a daring plan to defeat the invading mercenaries and a radical indigenous guerrilla army.

Historical adventureInspired by real eventsComing soon

The shape of it

Four turns, and no way back

A student arrives

Joe lands in Coronado for a thesis and finds a priest who refuses to let the poor stay invisible.

A friendship splits

One friend takes the collar, the other the uniform. Both mean to save the country from the other.

An exile plots

Thirty years on, a deposed general buys an army from a Florida island — with a cardinal's blessing.

An actress answers

The FBI's way in is a telenovela star, and the part she plays leaves nobody untouched.

Two timelines, one truth

The book moves between two eras.Choose where to begin.

Painted illustration of a young priest walking a dirt road through a mountain barrio at sunset — Casa Libertad · Cloud forest highlands

1960

Coronado, South America

Three friends and one impossible promise

A 22-year-old American graduate student steps off a plane into the republic of Coronado, hungry for adventure and a thesis. He finds padre Gabriel Hurtado and Joaquín González instead — two poor, brilliant men who intend to break the grip of a corrupt aristocracy and a complicit Church.

They carry that promise into villages no road reaches. Then the paths fork: one man takes holy orders and becomes the reluctant leader of a peasant movement; the other is absorbed by the army and rises to command it. The friendship becomes a war.

The dossier

Four people who cannot escape each other

The Star

Alejandra Valero

A beloved telenovela actress recruited by the FBI to infiltrate the General's inner circle. The role of her life has no second take.

El Carnicero

Gen. Joaquín González

Born in a poor Indigenous mountain village, raised by the army, exiled as a dictator. Living under a false name — with an army still to raise.

The Priest

Padre Gabriel Hurtado

Activist and unintended revolutionary, who rises from a hillside barrio to the presidency of Coronado — and becomes the one adversary the General cannot break.

The Outsider

Joe B.

An idealistic young American who came for a thesis and stayed for a revolution. He is the only man alive who knew them both.

And the world around them

The Irish nun

Aoife Walsh

On humanitarian mission in Casa Libertad, she falls deeply in love with the priest. Their illicit love ends in assassination.

The General's son

Diego González

Charged with organizing his father's mercenaries — until a telenovela star nearly ends the plan and him with it.

The General's wife

Consuelo González

Loyal through exile and disgrace, until she discovers the secret her husband keeps with her closest friend.

The Church

Cardinal Santo Domingo

A prince of the Church who blesses the General's return and finances an army in the name of order.

Navy SEAL for hire

“Fishboat” Mike Sanderson

Hired to train the mercenary army. Disgusted by the Cardinal's role in it, he changes sides and engineers its ruin.

Afro-Amazonian warrior

Matamba

She led her people out of the army's fire into a hidden valley, and opened it to the hunted priest.

Coronado

A country that does not exist,built from ones that did

Cloud forests above the volcanoes. Barrios raised overnight and burned by morning. Hidden valleys where two armies trained for the same throne. Every place in this book was walked before it was written.

Painted illustration of a hillside barrio of tin shacks with a small white chapel at dusk

Casa Libertad

The barrio a priest built out of nothing for campesinos driven off their land — and the first place the army came to burn.

Painted illustration of spear-carrying warriors in a misty cloud-forest valley

The cloud forest

Above the blazing volcanoes, a hidden valley of women warriors who escaped the General's men and never came back down.

Painted illustration of a mercenary camp of tents and jeeps in the jungle

The mercenary valleys

Two armies training in secret with one identical ambition: to own the country. Their collision destroys both.

Painted illustration of a Florida waterfront villa with palms and a moored boat

Key Biscayne

Turquoise water, a quiet house, a false name. Exile is comfortable — and it is temporary, if the General has his way.

The author

Fred Blitstein went to South America for a thesis.He came home with this.

As an idealistic young American in the 1960s, Blitstein arrived in Colombia to study the movement of Latin America's rural Indigenous poor from their mountain villages into desperate urban slums. Instead he was engulfed by the rebellion, corruption and political violence sweeping the region — and by a friendship with a priest who refused to stand aside.

He returned to the United States on two fellowships, earned a Masters and a PhD in Government and Urban Studies from Claremont Graduate University, then built a consulting practice that took him back across Latin America for decades — the Amazon, the high Andes, the ruins of lost civilizations, the teeming cities of Colombia and Peru. Somewhere in those years, this story was born.

The waitlist

Be first through the door

Join the waitlist and you'll get the opening chapter before anyone else, news as the publication date is set, and an invitation to the launch. No noise — only this book.

The cover of The General and the Priest by Fred Blitstein