If asked, I’m almost positive anyone would tell you that they want to leave the world remembered. They want to have an impact. When they die, they want their legacy to follow them for generations to come.

Alicia Raboy, an unwavering activist, dedicated her life to radical politics in Argentina. She gave her life for it, too. In Looking for Alicia, Marc Raboy dedicates just over 200 pages to telling Alicia’s story. Raboy, a retired teacher from Montreal, came across Alicia’s name when preparing for a trip to Argentina. It was their shared surname that spurred him to contact Alicia’s daughter, Angelina. Although it was found they were not related, Raboy would continue on to spread Alicia’s story like it was his own.

The 1960s and 70s brought political and social unrest and turmoil to Argentina. Raboy describes it as a post-Perón government turned state terror.

Alicia, an engineer by education and journalist by trade, was described by family members as being a lifelong supporter of the cause. The older she got, the more involved she became. She and her husband were part of the Montoneros, a left-leaning, extremist group opposing the state and their anti-socialist ways. Raboy’s description of the group is almost cult-like—anything you said and did was at the expressed wish of the group, and if you didn’t follow orders, you dealt with the consequences.

This commitment to the cause was, without a doubt, a risk to Alicia and her family. And yet, when speaking about her, friends and ex-lovers would say she was the loudest and most dedicated member of any opposition she was part of.

The years of her life spent dedicated to the Montoneros, and other groups before them, come with little to show for Alicia, though. To write nearly 300 pages about her, Raboy conducted lengthy research of family, friends, academics, trial documents, and even U.S. State Department diplomatic correspondence. For a woman so impactful, very little was public about her.

For me, this begs the question of how. How does Alicia have no public identity, aside from the people who know her, and the people who have dedicated their lives to studying people like her?

She died in 1976 when she, her husband and Angelina were ambushed by a right-wing “death squad.” Her husband died on the spot, her daughter was taken — but nobody knew what had happened to Alicia.

It was common at the time to be “disappeared,” the word used to describe people who went missing without cause or anything to prove their death. For rebels like Alicia, this wasn’t outside the norm. In the last few years of her life, Alicia and her family had to live in hiding, even keeping their location hidden from parents and siblings. They were wanted and hunted for being in opposition.

Reading this biography didn’t feel like the regular enjoyment of a non-fiction book bringing someone’s life to light. I didn’t finish the book feeling enlightened and happy to have learned more. Instead, I felt sad. For Alicia.

Raboy writes how “…in the end the most horrifying aspect of Alicia’s story is her absence. She left no trace whatsoever.”

I can’t imagine living a life so high-risk and being gone without a trace. In the world we live in right now, it seems almost unimaginable to leave no trail behind. The interconnectedness of our society is often criticized and has its downfalls, but there is a remembrance of everyone — from photos and videos, to social media. The mark you leave on the world is captured, even if just in an Instagram post. And while I’m not glamorizing this, it begs the question of what and who we remember. Alicia had an undoubtedly large impact on her country, a story that should be widely shared. Instead, someone from across the world had to spend his retired years researching this woman and telling her story in just over 200 pages.

While it could be said that many Argentinians at the time had similar fates to Alicia, it wouldn’t be a fair claim. Alicia’s own husband was well known across the region and country, and the book says that even with this, Alicia wasn’t known or remembered at all. More than that, in their trial, his case was easily solidified and read, as he had died on the spot. For Alicia, there’s no justice in never being found. No justice in being forgotten, and even worse, no justice in never being remembered. Despite family reflections and political correspondence, “we can’t reconstruct what happened to Alicia.”

As always, we must look at the intersections of Alicia and the way this impacts her story. She was a very loud woman, and while Raboy celebrates that, he always draws attention to the lack of other women surrounding her in political settings. In any setting, really. From her engineering education to her final days, she was one of the few women in her space. Raboy draws attention to the fact that while women were in political, academic and professional settings, they were also expected to be mothers and caregivers. And so, it doesn’t surprise me that Alicia’s husband was regarded across the country and she was unknown. A giver of her passion and her life, she saw nothing in return. It’s hard to read this book and not wonder if things would’ve been different if she hadn’t been a woman. Looking at what was known and celebrated of her husband, it’s not hard to know that things would have been different. If you searched for Alicia’s name before the trial, would pages of history websites have popped up? Would her city know her?

And so, while I feel sad for Alicia, I also feel sad for Angelina. A daughter raised to discover her identity herself. During her survivors story on trial in 2011, Angelina said, “The first consequence of these events was the loss of my identity, the loss of my history, the loss of my parents…I have an urgency to regain my identity…the lack of my mother is the greatest consequence.” More than anything, Looking for Alicia shows us the way that the loss of history and trauma can cross generations. How the parents who are forgotten, the mothers who are forgotten, leave a piece of themselves in the children they’ve raised. It isn’t just a loss of history; it’s a loss of one’s self. Forgetting Alicia meant forgetting Angelina before she even had a chance to begin her life.

Raboy is quick to say he requested approval from Alicia’s family to write this book and was cautious about approaching it at all. It wasn’t his family, nor was it his story. More than that, as I see it, he was using his voice to tell the story of someone who history never saw as having a voice. Even if his intentions were pure, which I believe they were, this is something worth addressing. We are living in a time where the voices of women are being quickly shut-down, closed-off and invalidated. Looking for Alicia is an unfortunate and stark symbol of the way women’s lives and stories are seen as inconsequential, as vessels for amplifying the lives of people around them. Years later, the publication of this book at a time where the rights of women are under attack feels like a chilling comparison to our current climate. As I watch women around the world stand up and fight for what is right, I only hope their voices carry on well into the future, and we won’t forget their bravery and perseverance.

While we got to the end of this book with very little shocking, new or revolutionary information about Alicia, I have to wonder if that was the point of it all. Or, if readers were supposed to walk away sad, like I did, at the lack of stage Alicia has been given in history. At the lack of attention rebellious women are often given in history. And, at the way this trickles down into generations, unaware of their origin and identity.