Rudolfo Anaya

Ultima, a curandera, one who cures with herbs and magic, comes to Antonio Marez's New Mexico family when he is six years old, and she helps him discover himself in the magical secrets of the pagan past.

39 pages : 23 x 29 cm

After years of working with at-risk youth, Chicana social worker Rosa Medina leaves Los Angeles's gang-ridden barrios and street violence to settle in the New Mexican village of Puerto de Luna. Her goal: to write a novel about Bilito--Billy the Kid. It all sounds straightforward enough, but things get more complicated--and a lot more exciting--when Rosa is transported back in time to 1879, where she participates in the infamous Lincoln County War, riding alongside Bilito. How Rosa achieves this fantastical feat of time travel, and what she discovers about herself, Bilito, and her Nuevomexicano heritage, unfolds through the course of this novel by master storyteller Rudolfo Anaya.

Professor Rosa Medina, a folklorist researching the ChupaCabra, goes to Mexico to track down recent sightings of the creature which kills its victims, particularly goats, by sucking their brains out.