Set in the crumbling Spanish missions of nineteenth-century Baja California, this mythic novel in linked stories follows two grief-stricken people as haunted as the desolate chapels around them: a priest who caused the drowning of a native boy by compelling him to fish for pearls, and a deaf woman trying to outrun her murderous reputation as a pistolera. Though the stories span landscapes, villages, characters, and decades, the heart of the novel is Baja California itself-a stark land of cactus and creosote, of russet canyons and splintered wastes of rock-where people living in the shadow of ruined missions seek redemption on an inhospitable peninsula forsaken even by its priests.
"Muia's voice is essential. These stories are fire, and this book is powerful. Your favorite book is waiting to meet you."
Luis Alberto Urrea
"Like the far tolling of a bell, Muia's stories are reminiscent of tale, legend, and fable. Stark and moving, unsparing and compassionate, her work is grounded in history but suspended in no particular time . . . these are spellbinding myths to get lost in."
Robert Clark
"A beautiful and meaningful collection of stories portraying an era we have needlessly forgotten . . . a capturing of our timeless matters of the heart: faith, loss, betrayal, yearning, and the ragged hot rock-strewn desert path that is the way to redemption. I can think of no more worthy collection to wear Flannery O'Connor's mantle."
