The Leper's Companions - Tapa dura

Confronted with the unbearable loss of someone she loves, a woman creates an imaginary new world for herself, in which she joins a group of pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem

per's Companions begins, we know only that the narrator has lost someone she loves. In her bereavement, she creates a past in which she might both lose and find herself: a fifteenth-century village in a land of saints and spirits, inexplicable afflictions and miraculous awakenings. With a band of pilgrims -- among them an old man, his pregnant daughter, a priest, a dying woman, and a leper -- she discovers a beached mermaid, watches a priest drive madness from a woman's mouth, enters a mossy forest inhabited by a hunted man covered in shaggy hair, and witnesses a map being digested in the belly of a ravenous woman.

Moving effortlessly between the magical and the real, the past and the present, the journey of the narrator and her companions transcends the physical terrain and becomes a fantastical quest for rebirth. We are skillfully ushered into the emotional lives of each of the travelers as they reflect and ultimately redefine the life of the narrator.

The Lepe