The beguiling story of a young journalist whose investigation of a
murder leads her to the most legendary healer in all of Mexico, from one
of the most prominent voices of a new generation of Latin American
writers
Paloma is dead. But before she was murdered, before she was even Paloma,
she was a traditional healer named Gaspar. Before she was murdered, she
taught her cousin Feliciana the secrets of the ceremonies known as
veladas, and about the Language and the Book that unlock their secrets.
Sent to report on Paloma's murder, Zoe meets Feliciana in the mountain
village of San Felipe. There, the two women's lives twist around each
other in a danse macabre. Feliciana tells Zoe the story of her struggle
to become an accepted healer in her community, and Zoe begins to
understand the hidden history of her own experience as a woman, finding
her way in a hostile environment shaped by and for men.
Weaving together two parallel narratives that mirror and refract one
another, this extraordinary novel envisions the healer as storyteller
and the writer as healer, and offers a generous and nuanced
understanding of a world that can be at turns violent and exultant,
cruel and full of hope.
"A story of the world's repeated failure to control feminine power and
the sheer magic of language itself. An enthralling, passionate story
about secrets both holy and profane." --Catherine Lacey, author of Pew
and Nobody Is Ever Missing
