This novel by Rubén Ruiz is located in the Second Great War, between 1941 and 1944. And it tells us about the Comète network, that the Allied aviators came out of the Nazi lands and returned back to Britain, but not only from that, or, rather, more than that, from Basque border stories and smugglers. With a steady pace, short chapters,
Ruben Ruiz tells us the adventures of the Comète network (perhaps with too many historical information sometimes) and tells us the story of the young Mattin. Mattin, who lives under the shelter of a smuggler uncle in the Baztan after being orphaned, shows us the dangers of crossing the border and the tickles of the stomach, how it passes from adolescence to adulthood and its relationship with Amelie, who lives on the other side.

It is an adventure novel on the border, a historical novel, also initiatic, that seeks the reader’s smile and tear. Smile with several stories of smuggling, tears at the border or die by Nazi tracking. The author has structured the novel to encourage readers to read, witness the development of Mattin and the love story with Amelie, but also manages to bring the reader closer to the Comète network, to his work and to his suffering. All this, framed in the life of the Baztan of the time, realizing the smugglers, the relations that existed between the north and the south, with the Civil Guard, or between the smugglers and the peasants.

It is a novel divided into 33 chapters, each chapter bears a proverb related to what will happen. And the fact that the narrative is on two different planes, telling two stories that coincide at the end, being a work full of facts and action encourages you to move forward, to read the 250 pages that make up the book, whether young readers or adults, because this novel is also on the border.