CURANDERA

A striking tale of supernatural haunting, healing, and revenge.

In sanity-shattering mourning for her lost Baby, Zulmira, a gifted healer and disciple of the shamanic god Oni, sets off a string of strange events with her arrival in the 17th-century settlement of Gethsemane Cape Verde. Four centuries and a continent away, Therese is building a diverse crew of Oni Kin in contemporary London. Despite the distance, Zulmira and Therese share powerful connections. As shamanic disciples of the omnipotent Oni, the women interact with the spirit world. They see things and know things that defy everyday reality and terrify the average human. While Zulmira’s new neighbors welcome her service, they’re wary of this willful woman who appears from nowhere and has no man to answer to. The skepticism is amplified as she moves in with and takes care of a respected local fisherman, Domingos; his ailing wife, Marguerite; and their daughter, Sueli, in exchange for room and board. Though she seems to help, it’s increasingly clear that Zulmira is hiding something, and suddenly people are disappearing or turning up dead. Her evolution is fascinating to watch unfold. While Zulmira is propelled by grief and jealousy, Therese’s motivations are less clear. She and her housemates spend their time trying to “move through dimensions” by ingesting peyote and a mysterious and grotesque psychedelic fruit. Eventually, Zulmira’s and Therese’s worlds bleed into each other, but that shattering of planes is the least interesting part of both tales. The greatest contribution of the contemporary stories is how they show off the fantastical consequences of Oni’s powers and how the events of Zulmira’s time reverberate. Adding difficulty to an already byzantine dual timeline balancing religious mythologies and universal themes of love and survival, the writing alternates between finely poetic and so thick with obscure metaphor and symbol that the story becomes confusingly opaque.

Exquisite and esoteric, this literary horror story will confound many readers but may reward those who persevere.