The Bruja’s Tale, Tim Madden’s hot new novel about Mayan witchcraft, sex, and murder, also poses serious questions about human reality.
Anyone who’s wondered if something exists beyond what we taste, feel, smell, and touch will want to read The Bruja’s Tale. Anyone who’s asked if part of us continues after we die will want to read The Bruja’s Tale. And anyone who’s engrossed by a good mystery story will want to read The Bruja’s Tale as well.
Tomas Guzman Schoen is a European-educated and handsome bachelor with a home in Guatemala City, a ranch in the Peten, and a lover who resembles Salma Hayek. He has few cares,but his comfortable life is about to change. After his uncle asks him to investigate two deaths in El Paraiso, the town where he is Chief of Police, then dies himself under suspicious circumstances, Tomas is snared in a mind bending web of lust and magic spun by a Mayan bruja (witch) who seduces him sexually while trying to possess his soul.
Though rescued by his lover, Sandra, and her curandero cousin, the visions he experienced under the bruja’s spell coupled with a frightening sense of his own burgeoning spiritual powers, force Tomas to reconcile animist realities with Western rationality. And, as it becomes clear someone wants to stop his investigation permanently, the question becomes whether he can unmask a killer before he and Sandra become the next victims.
Vivid with Central American color and a surprise ending, The Bruja’s Tale is a must read for anyone interested in a culture that exists only a few hundred miles south of our border which often contradicts modern materialist perspectives.
The Bruja’s Tale is first in a series of tightly written mystery thrillers in which cross-cultural heroes suffer spiritual crises as they attempt to solve crimes. It is published under the Langdon Street Press imprint of Mill City Press.