Description
A TIME BEST BOOK OF THE SUMMER
From the author of the original politically daring and passionately written Vogue novel Fruit of the Drunken Tree comes a dazzling kaleidoscopic memoir reclaiming her familys otherworldly legacy
For Ingrid Rojas Contreras magic runs in the family Raised amid the political violence of 1980s and 90s Colombia in a house bustling with her mothers fortunetelling clients she was a hard child to surprise Her maternal grandfather Nono was a renowned curandero a community healer gifted with what the family called the secrets the power to talk to the dead tell the future treat the sick and move the clouds And as the first woman to inherit the secrets Rojas Contreras mother was just as powerful Mami delighted in her ability to appear in two places at once and she could cast out even the most persistent spirits with nothing more than a glass of water
This legacy had always felt like it belonged to her mother and grandfather until while living in the US in her twenties Rojas Contreras suffered a head injury that left her with amnesia As she regained partial memory her family was excited to tell her that this had happened before Decades ago Mami had taken a fall that left her with amnesia too And when she recovered she had gained access to the secrets
In 2012 spurred by a shared dream among Mami and her sisters and her own powerful urge to relearn her family history in the aftermath of her memory loss Rojas Contreras joins her mother on a journey to Colombia to disinter Nonos remains With Mami as her unpredictable stubborn and often hilarious guide Rojas Contreras traces her lineage back to her Indigenous and Spanish roots uncovering the violent and rigid colonial narrative that would eventually break her mestizo family into two camps those who believe the secrets are a gift and those who are convinced they are a curse
Interweaving family stories more enchanting than those in any novel resurrected Colombian history and her own deeply personal reckonings with the bounds of reality Rojas Contreras writes her way through the incomprehensible and into her inheritance The result is a luminous testament to the power of storytelling as a healing art and an invitation to embrace the extraordinary
Includes a downloadable PDF of the authors personal photographs of family members scenes and mementos from the printed book
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