Maria, Maria is an inimitable collection set across the tropics and megacities of the Americas. Readers will be enticed and infuriated as characters negotiate with nature to cast their desired ends-such as the enigmatic community college professor in "Brujeria for Beginners'; the disturbingly faithful widow in "Tijuca"; and the lonely little girl in "Burial," who awakens a sabretooth tiger. Brimming with sharp wit and ferocious female intuition, the book bubbles over into a novella of fantastical proportions-a "tropigoth" family drama set in a reimagined California micro-rainforest about the legacies of three Marias, possibly all Marias.,adapted from dust jacket