From the author of the critically acclaimed novel Fruit of the Drunken Tree comes a dazzling, kaleidoscopic memoir reclaiming her family's otherworldly legacy.
For Ingrid Rojas Contreras, magic runs in the family. Growing up in the Colombia of the 1980's and 90's in a house where "what did you dream?" was asked in place of "how are you?" Rojas Contreras' world was laced with augury and violence. Her maternal grandfather, Nono, was a renowned curandero, a community healer gifted with the ability to talk to the dead, tell the future, treat the sick, and move the clouds. As a young girl, Rojas Contreras eavesdropped on her mother's fortune-telling business from the stairs and waited eagerly for the periodic phone calls that meant Mami had, yet again appeared in two places at once.
So when Ingrid, now living in the U.S., suffered a head injury in her twenties that left her with amnesia- an accident eerily similar to a fall that had put her mother in a coma at the age of eight, from which she woke with not just amnesia, but the ability to see ghosts- the family assumes "the secrets" have finally been passed down. But, as Ingrid recovers her memories, no supernatural abilities are forthcoming. Rather, she is consumed by a powerful urge to learn even more about her heritage than she knew before the accident.
Spurred by a shared dream among Mami and her sisters, wherein Nono communicates that he is unable to rest peacefully in the afterlife, Ingrid joins her mother on a journey home to Colombia to disinter her grandfather's remains. With her mother as her unpredictable, stubborn and often hilarious guide, Ingrid traces her lineage back to her Indigenous and Spanish roots, uncovering the violent and rigid colonial narrative that would eventually break her family into two camps: those who believe "the secrets" are a gift, and those who are convinced they are a curse.
