From the author of the critically acclaimed Fruit of the Drunken Treecomes a dazzling, kaleidoscopic memoir about liberating herself fromWestern notions of fact and fiction to reclaim her family's otherworldlylegacy.

For Ingrid Rojas Contreras, magic runs in the family. Growing up in theColombia of the 1980’s and 1990’s in a house where “what did you dream?”was asked in place of “how are you?” her world was laced with prophecy andviolence. Her maternal grandfather, Nono, was a renowned curandero, acommunity healer gifted with the ability to talk to the dead, tell the future, curethe sick, and move the clouds. As a young girl, Rojas Contreras eavesdroppedon her mother’s fortune-telling business from the stairs and waited eagerly forthe moments when Mami appeared in two places at once. She was accustomedto "letting the ghosts in."

So when Ingrid, now living in the U.S., suffered a head injury in her 20’s thatleft her with amnesia—an accident eerily similar to a fall that had put hermother in a coma at the age of 8, from which she woke with not just amnesia, but the ability to see ghosts--the family assumes “the secrets” have finally beenpassed down to the next generation. But as Ingrid recovers her memories, theydon't come with supernatural abilities. Rather, she is consumed by a powerfulurge to learn even more about her heritage than she knew before the accident.Spurred by a shared dream among Mami and her sisters, wherein Nonocommunicates that he is unable to rest peacefully in the afterlife, Ingrid joinsher mother on a journey home to Colombia to disinter her grandfather’sremains. With her mother as her unpredictable, stubborn and often hilariousguide, Ingrid traces her lineage back to her indigenous roots, uncovering theviolent and rigid colonial narrative that would eventually break her family intotwo camps: those who believe "the secrets" are a gift, and those who areconvinced they are a curse.

Interweaving family stories more enchanting than any novel, resurrectedColombian history, and her own deeply personal reckonings with the bounds ofreality, Rojas Contreras writes her way through the incomprehensible and intoher inheritance. The result is a luminous testament to the power of storytellingas a healing art and an invitation to embrace the extraordinary.

INGRID ROJAS CONTRERAS was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia. Her first novel Fruit of the Drunken Tree was the silver medal winner in First Fiction from the California Book Awards, and a New York Times editor's choice. Her essays and short stories have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Buzzfeed, Nylon, and Guernica, among others. Rojas Contreras has received numerous awards and fellowships from Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, VONA, Hedgebrook, The Camargo Foundation, and the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture. She is a Visiting Writer at Saint Mary’s College.