Summary:

This is the story of a Chicano family in the little town of Tome, New Mexico: Sofi, her (sometime) husband Domingo, and their four daughters--Esperanza, Fe, Caridad, and the youngest, who is epileptic, "La Loca Santa." So Far From God includes a full cast of characters including the healer, Doña Felicia, Francisco el Penitente (El Franky), a psychic surgeon, and an assortment of others.

The novel tells the story of relatively short lives and (longer) deaths of the four daughters. Esperanza, a journalist, dies as a hostage in the Middle East; Fe dies of cancer as a result of chemical poisoning from her job in the weapons industry; Caridad is miraculously restored after a mysterious mauling, and later dies--or disappears--off a cliff with the woman of her dreams; La Loca, the remaining daughter, dies of what appears to be HIV infection. Sofi, having pronounced herself mayor of Tome, in her grief over Loca's death, goes on to found the worldwide organization, M.O.M.A.S. (Mothers of Martyrs and Saints).

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Yolanda Ramírez, a phlebotomist in Coachella Valley, California, begins worrying, in 1983, about the deaths of gay men, hemophiliacs, and women who have had cosmetic surgery. The novel unfolds with her explorations into the connections among these deaths, but it also explores Yolanda’s relationship with a gay couple, one of whose members has AIDS, the growing romantic relationship between her and Marina Lomas (who has run away from an abusive husband with her small daughter), her relationship with her father, Crescienco.

Crescienco, employed as a gardener for Eliana Townsend (whom he loves and who still has the scars from her cosmetic surgery), watches her slowly die from some mysterious and debilitating disease. Finally Yolanda convinces the hospital that her hunches about the mysterious AIDS virus having infected the blood supply are correct.

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The adolescent Estrella labors with her farmworker family in the fields of California. Her mother, abandoned by Estrella's father years before, has married an older man who cares for the family but yearns for his home in Mexico. Enduring backbreaking work, the family lives the peripatetic lifestyle of migrant workers, including substandard housing, low wages and significant health risks.

The family extends itself to Alejo, whose only local family is a cousin close to his own age. Alejo and Estrella fall in love. Alejo is sprayed by a crop duster one day in the field, sickens, and is cared for by Estrella and her family. Eventually he becomes so sick they must take him to the community clinic and, later, to the hospital, presumably to die.

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Harlan Jane Eagleton, a faith healer, tells the story of her evolution from being a rock star's manager and beautician into healing. She travels from tank town to tank town ("on account of them water tanks") performing faith healings. The novel begins at the end of the story and loops forward to where her story begins, Harlan Jane's first faith healing.

In the process, readers are given accounts of her life as manager of the rock star, her love affair with a paranoid German lover, and her former husband, a medical anthropologist who travels and studies in Africa. We hear about Harlan Jane also from Nicholas, her assistant, who sometimes narrates what happens at the healings.

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Rosita Arvigo is a Chicago-trained doctor of naprapathy (an alternative therapy that involves soft tissue manipulation, diet, and other non-drug modalities) who moved with her husband (also a naprapath) to Belize to open a medical clinic. Shortly after her arrival she met Elijio Panti, given a variety of names by his patients: el viejito, the old man, numero uno, or el mero, the authentic one.

One of the last traditional healers of Mayan medicine, Panti uses observation, experience, and divination with his sastun to diagnose his patients' illnesses; and herbs, manipulation, and prayers to treat them. Arvigo studied with Panti for five years, learning to identify and use countless plants in the rainforest that surrounds her home and, eventually, discovering the object that becomes her own sastun.

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Summary:

Chamoiseau, a graduate student, arrives in Texaco, the illegal settlement above Fort-de-France, and is knocked unconscious by a rock. One volatile inhabitant has responded viscerally to the city official come to order the razing of his home. Others notice the coincidence between Chamoiseau's arrival and more positive events. Thus, in hope, and fear of police reprisal, they revive this "Christ," and bring him to Marie-Sophie Laborieux. In "the battle of her life" Texaco's founder begins to persuade the "Bird of Cham" to preserve her story and that of her people, to spare her town.

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An insidious plague infests an isolated town in a land that suggests a location like Australia. Although the affliction is not fatal, the enigmatic epidemic is characterized by a discoloration of the skin, generalized malaise, and occasionally aching eyeballs. Its spread seems somehow linked to the lack of rain and the group of native "savages" who inhabit the harsh land outside the town.

Prejudice and paranoia are clearly greater threats to the townspeople than the relatively benign plague that has infiltrated the city. Rayner is a sympathetic and lonely doctor who finds himself caught between the residents of the town and the savages. When both he and his girlfriend, Zoë, develop the pathognomonic pigmentation of the plague, their lives acquire deeper meaning.

The novel ends with an army of soldiers originally intent on exterminating the savages instead withdrawing after the troops witness a mystical native ceremony. Rain clouds overhead are poised to unleash a deluge.

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A stray dog bites the left ankle of 12-year-old Sierva Maria de Todos los Angeles. She and her peculiar parents live in a country near the Caribbean Sea during colonial times. Her father belongs to the class of decaying nobility. He is a weak man with poor judgment. Her scheming mother is a nymphomaniac who abuses cacao tablets and fermented honey. Sierva Maria is more or less raised by the family's slaves whose culture she assimilates. The youngster has luxuriant copper-colored hair and a penchant for lying--"she wouldn't tell the truth even by mistake" according to her mother. (p. 16)

Before long, the dog dies of rabies. When Sierva Maria begins exhibiting bizarre behavior, no one is quite sure of the cause even though everyone seems to have his or her own theory. Is the girl displaying signs of rabies? Is she possessed by a demon? The physician Abrenuncio doubts either diagnosis. The powerful Bishop believes the girl may require an exorcism. Perhaps Sierva Maria is simply eccentric or maybe even crazy. Ninety-three days after being bitten by the dog, she is locked in a cell in the Convent of Santa Clara.

The Bishop appoints his protégé, 36-year-old Father Cayetano Delaura, to investigate the matter. The priest is immediately infatuated with the girl. When the Bishop learns of Cayetano Delaura's love for Sierva Maria and his unacceptable actions, the priest is disciplined and then relegated to caring for lepers at the hospital. The Bishop next takes matters into his own hands by performing the rite of exorcism on Sierva Maria. After five sessions, she is found in bed "dead of love." (p. 147)

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Summary:

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance tells the story of Ryu (Ha-kyun Shin), a young Korean man who cannot hear or speak, whose sister Han Bo-bae is dangerously ill with kidney disease. Because Ryu and Bo-bae are poor and there is no social system of health coverage in Korea, Bo-bae is not able to receive the transplant she needs to survive. Ryu wants to give his sister one of his own kidneys but he has the wrong blood type. When Ryu is laid off and given a lump sum in severance pay, he seeks out black-market organ transplant. He agrees to give one of his kidneys and ten million won (roughly US $10,000) in exchange for a kidney for his sister. Ryu awakens from anesthesia to find that his kidney has been removed and his money stolen by the black marketeers.

When a kidney becomes available through the hospital, Ryu and his friend Cha-youngmi (Du-na Bae) kidnap the daughter of a wealthy factory owner (Kang-ho Song) in order to raise the money to pay for it. The child dies in an accident and two vengeance plots unfold, that of Ryu punishing the black marketeers and the vengeance that the factory owner wreaks on Ryu and Youngmi for the death of his daughter.

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Summary:

The story is told from the perspective of Julian, a recent college graduate who appears to be waiting for employment commensurate with his education; he lives at home with his solicitous widowed mother. The setting is the recently integrated South of the 1960’s. Events unfold during a ride on an integrated bus, in which all of the story’s complex relationships are played out: the vindictive, self-deluding dependency of Julian on his mother; the insightless yet well-intentioned doting of his mother, who is tied to the societal conventions in which she was raised; the condescension of "enlightened" whites toward blacks; the resentment of blacks toward well-meaning whites- all depicted with great skill and humor.

The crisis occurs in a confrontation between Julian’s mother and a black woman wearing the same hat, when the mother tries to give a penny to her counterpart’s child. In the incident, Julian’s mother suffers a stroke to which Julian is at first oblivious, being so consumed with fury at his mother’s (to him inappropriate) gesture to the child. When he realizes how disabled his mother is, Julian is overwhelmed with grief and fear; the extent of his self-deception is fully confirmed.

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