Tenerife Author Launches Sequel "The Price of Secrets"

Diego Gutiérrez Quintana, born in Santa Cruz de Tenerife in 2000, published his first novel, The Price of Memories, a year ago. This fictional story was loosely inspired by his great-grandfather's life, who, like many Canary Islanders, emigrated to Venezuela in the first half of the 20th century.

In December 2024, the author explained that his debut novel tells a story across two different time periods. It follows Miguel, a 25-year-old who discovers his grandfather Juan de la Torre's diaries in 1992, and Juan's own account of his adventure in America. Four decades earlier, Juan had secretly traveled to the Venezuelan state of Aragua.

"It's historical fiction," Gutiérrez stated a year ago, "but beyond that, it's hard to say if it's romantic, a thriller, or an adventure, as I believe it has a bit of everything." He added, "It's the story of an ordinary man who sacrifices himself for someone he loves. Things happen to him that are beyond his control, and he becomes a victim of the consequences of his actions."

Now, Diego Gutiérrez will present his new novel, The Price of Secrets, in Tenerife's capital at TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes on Thursday, December 11, at 7:00 PM. The author explains that this new book "delves into the mysteries left at the end of the previous work," when Juan is forced to flee Venezuela and finds refuge in Cuba with the help of an old friend. He adds, "At the same time, in the other timeline, Miguel, along with his father and uncle, begins to piece together what was known about Juan's life in America and what had been hidden until then."

The writer notes that this new work is more ambitious in its structure than The Price of Memories. While the first novel clearly separated the two eras, The Price of Secrets features "temporal jumps, weaving a story that the reader must assemble like puzzle pieces—some in black and white, others in color, but all part of the same narrative."

In the book, what happens to Juan is just as important as what happens to Miguel. "They are two protagonists, in different times, living the same story. One experiences it firsthand, and the other investigates what happened 40 years ago," emphasizes Diego Gutiérrez Quintana. He points to this characteristic as the main challenge he faced in writing it. "The biggest challenge was to tell events separated by four decades, yet still make them part of the same story, while also trying to narrate them with different tones without losing the reader's interest," he explains.

"Ultimately, it is a single plot told from two temporal perspectives," the writer adds. "So the goal was not only to ensure it remained coherent, but also that each cliffhanger at the end of each chapter connected well to the next, regardless of whether it was set earlier or later in time."

Diego Gutiérrez describes his own journey of creating this duology as eye-opening. "It has convinced me that I want to dedicate myself to literature, and I hope one day I can live solely from writing novels. It has also shown me what kind of writer I want to be. The desire to entertain with a story and the will to tell something with intellectual depth don't necessarily have to be separate. That is something I keep very much in mind in each of my stories," concludes the Tenerife-born writer, who is already working on a new literary project: a crime novel.