PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST u2022 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST u2022 From the bestselling author of Fruit of the Drunken Tree, comes a dazzling, kaleidoscopic memoir reclaiming her family's otherworldly legacy.nnA BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: TIME, NPR, VULTURE, PEOPLE, BOSTON GLOBE, VANITY FAIR, ESQUIRE, & MOREnnu201cRojas Contreras reacquaints herself with her familyu2019s past, weaving their stories with personal narrative, unraveling legacies of violence, machismo and colonialismu2026 In the process, she has written a spellbinding and genre-defying ancestral history.u201du2014New York Times Book Review nnFor Ingrid Rojas Contreras, magic runs in the family. Raised amid the political violence of 1980s and '90s Colombia, in a house bustling with her motheru2019s fortune-telling 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 u201cthe secretsu201d: the power to talk to the dead, tell the future, treat the sick, and move the clouds. And as the first woman to inherit u201cthe secrets,u201d Rojas Contrerasu2019 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.nnThis legacy had always felt like it belonged to her mother and grandfather, until, while living in the U.S. 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 u201cthe secrets.u201d
