Susto: The Curandera’s Ash and Blood

Susto: The Curandera’s Ash and Blood

Rituals for the Soul

In addition to the novella Susto contains eight chapters of shadow work. These ancestral curanderismo practices, shared by seasoned curandera Yadira Roman, serve as a ritual book to bridge the soul back to the body and convert the deepest shadows into a source of bone-deep strength.

MacAzen, Delia, and Perfusia inhabit the lungs of a generational trafficking ring. In the cramped basements of New York City, they breathe the copper tang of blood and the stinging scent of bleach. In the Catskill Mountains, the empire expands into the silence of the hemlocks. For years, they have learned to kiss the knuckles that bruise them, mistaking iron bars for the rafters of a home.

Now, the empire’s rot reaches for the innocent. The women stop running and start listening. The land becomes their compass, its topography a map of their own scarred skin. The roots of the mountains vibrate with the secrets they’ve been forced to carry, calling each woman toward a separate, harrowing awakening. To survive the susto, the fright that severs the soul from the body;they must vomit up the false tongues of their masters and speak a language of truth.

The shadow in you is a living thing.
It carries the same teeth as your predator.
Given the right hunger, you are capable of the same harm.

Through the elements of blood and salt, the line between the blessed and the tainted vanishes. They must choose what to salvage and what to bury in the dirt of the mountains to be consumed and transformed.