The Spanish Twin

'The Spanish Twin': a story of love, courage and tenacity against the background of the Spanish Civil War. The Morán twins are like two sides of a coin: Robert is headstrong and outgoing, Maggie is shy and retiring. With a Spanish father and an English mother, they have always joked that Robert is the Spanish twin and Maggie the English twin.
In 1936, Robert runs off to Madrid to fight on the side of the Republicans, leaving Maggie to care for their cantankerous, widowed mother, Katherine. A year later, when Katherine tragically commits suicide, Maggie is left alone in a large gloomy house on Stanmore Common with a mountain of bills to settle. Her mother's solicitor tells her he can't release funds from the will until she locates her brother. But she has lost contact with Robert, her letters having remained unanswered.
Desperation drives Maggie to make a life-changing decision: she decides to go to Spain in search of Robert. Her quest takes her from middle-class England to war-torn Madrid to the battlefields of Catalonia. Unexpected help comes from a 50 year-old maverick, who guides her across the French/Spanish border, a teenage girl, with whom she shares accommodation and a doctor working in the war zone, who eventually conveys to her brother.
Their reunion is disappointing. Robert is no longer the carefree young man Maggie remembers. He has become a zealot, fighting for a cause which she considers, isn't his own. But during her travels, fate gives Maggie the opportunity to become a different person: a 'mother' to four orphaned children. With the assistance of an English diplomat, she contrives to get the children out of Spain to the safety of England, where the house on the Common becomes a happy home.
The theme of the story is role-reversal as Maggie sheds her timidity to emerge as the stronger twin.

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