A new edition of a National Book Award finalist follows a black faith
healer whose shrewd observations about human nature are told with the
rich lyricism of the oral storytelling tradition.
From the acclaimed author of Corregidora, The Healing follows Harlan
Jane Eagleton as she travels to small towns, converting skeptics,
restoring minds, and healing bodies. But before she found her calling,
Harlan had been a minor rock star's manager and, before that, a
beautician. Harlan retraces her story to the beginning, when she once
had a fling with the rock star's ex-husband and found herself infatuated
with an Afro-German horse dealer. Along the way she's somehow lost her
own husband, a medical anthropologist now traveling with a medicine
woman across eastern Africa. Harlan draws us deeper into her world and
the mystery at the heart of her tale: the story of her first healing.
The Healing is a lyrical and at times humorous exploration of the
struggle to let go of pain, anger, and even love. Slipping seamlessly
back through Harlan's memories in a language rich with the textured
cadences of unfiltered dialogue, Gayl Jones weaves her story to its
dramatic--and unexpected--beginning.