A piercing and passionate novel, set in rural Argentina, about violence and masculinity. Oscar Tamai and Elvio Miranda, the patriarchs of two families of brickmakers, have for years nursed a mutual hatred, but their teenage sons, Pâajaro and âAngelito, somehow fell in love. Brickmakers begins as Pâajaro and Marciano, âAngelito's older brother, lie dying in the mud at the base of a Ferris wheel. Inhabiting a dreamlike state between life and death, they recall the events that forced them to pay the price of their fathers' petty feud. The Tamai and Miranda families are caught, like the Capulets and the Montagues, in an almost mythic conflict, one that emerges from stubborn pride and intractable machismo.