Josefina Aldecoa's novelistic trilogy ("Historia de una maestra", 1990; "Mujeres de negro", 1994; "La fuerza del destino", 1997) recounts the life of Gabriela López Pardo from her early years as a teacher in the 1920s until her death in 1982. Narrated by Gabriela herself in the first and third volumes, and by her daughter Juana in the second, the trilogy links memory and history as the narrators seek to define their sense of self within the time and space of twentieth-century Spain and mexico. Although Gabriela repudiates much of her past (and thus much of what gives substance to the trilogy), the past must be articulated and examined before she can perceive its almost tangible banality. Hence the telling of the story becomes the content of the form of the novel as Gabriela explores if hers is a life worth living.