Before Paloma was murdered, she was a traditional healer named Gaspar. Zoe has been sent to report on Paloma’s death and meets Feliciana, Paloma’s niece. Paloma taught Feliciana the secret ceremonies of the veladas and about the Language of the Book that unlocks secrets. As their stories intertwine, Feliciana tells Zoe the story of her struggle to become an accepted healer in her community, and Zoe begins to understand the hidden history of her own experience as a woman, finding her way in a hostile environment shaped by and for men.

I tried to read this one before and put it down, but I’m glad it picked it back up in the last few weeks. It was a lot to keep up with, but the storytelling was beautiful, the characters were deep and interesting, and the stories were weaved together like a beautiful tapestry more than like clunky, Tetris blocks. It’s a bit of an investment of time and attention, but I think it was well worth it.

Witches have been traditionally vilified and attacked for their supposed dark powers. Only recently has history uncovered the power of witches as healers in the community. In Lozano's Witches, we see the story of one healer, her powers, and a reporter who discovers her. We find the power of healing and healing in storytelling.

The story begins with a death. A healer, Palomar, has been murdered. In alternative chapters, we get the story of the healer that will replace her and the background of the reporter who will tell their story. The healer's background takes place in Mexico. She is fascinated with Polomar and her powers. She aspires to grow her own powers with time. The reporter grew up in the United States. Of Mexican descent, she gets as much culture from watching The Simpsons as she does her family. Both reveal the healing that can happen through storytelling.

Witches is an alternating first-person narrative between two women - Zoe, a journalist in Mexico City sent to report on the murder of Paloma, a rural healer; and Feliciana, Paloma's relative. I really enjoyed the parallel narratives in this book - Lozano and her translator wrote them with very distinct voices, and it made for a compelling read once I got into it, which took a minute. I did keep waiting for there to be more of a plot, but once I realized it's not that sort of book and was more a life narrative of the two, I enjoyed reading it more. The details of life in different parts of Mexico, themes about expectations on women and character voice were enough to keep me reading, and I ended up really enjoying it.

"All women are born with a bit of bruja in them for protection."

Chalk this one up to a case of cover-love. (Well, okay . . . the title pretty much sucked me in as well.)

I'm easily had.

And, speaking of covers, this one clearly says A Novel, but the book reads like a disjointed and rambling memoir with the author recounting various incidents as they happened to occur to her. If there was a plot, it floated by me when I wasn't looking

On the plus side, there is some fine writing here. I particularly liked this line:

In San Juan de los Lagos there was one main street and it was scrawny with its ribs sticking out like a dog everyone knew . . .

A journalist's mission to write about the murder of a trans woman becomes a journey to facing her trauma and the violence that many women face whether passive or aggressive. Paloma is a curandera, a healer who uses nature and her ancestral connection to heal those who come to her. When she is murdered, Zoe, an investigative journalist travels to San Felipe to record her story.

Through Feliciana, Zoe not only learns of the power of the curanderos/as, the patriarchal notions of inheritance, Paloma's support, love, and ultimate choice in choosing her own path but also shares her family history and the stories of her mother and sister.

What Lozano has done here is to show the parallels between women's lives and the shared experiences across time and place, whether it be facing discrimination and violence for being trans or queer, being assaulted in safe spaces, or choosing one's identity over one's purpose, women are equally vulnerable and powerful. And sharing our stories only helps in amplifying that power.

Witches is a complex novel about storytelling, family, trauma, and healing. At the start, it is because of the murder of Feliciana’s cousin Paloma, a curandera (healer) and a Muxe (trans woman) that Feliciana, also a healer, and Zoe, a journalist reporting on the crime, are brought together—but it’s clear that what helps them begin to truly relate to and commune with each other is “the Language,” the mystical means of healing detailed in Feliciana’s account of her life experiences. There is tremendous power in what “the Language” means for both healing and storytelling and the way stories are a central part of healing in this wonderful novel.

The novel alternates between the responses from Zoe’s interview with Feliciana, who cannot read or write and whose narration mirrors oral storytelling traditions, and Zoe, whose account as a journalist takes a more sophisticated tone and narrative form. Both accounts are compelling in their own ways, though I initially found it difficult to immerse myself in the book because of the contrast. Feliciana’s voice brought to mind the narrator in one of my favorite novels, The Healing by Gayl Jones, which uses a similar oral storytelling style and also explores the life of a folk healer—though Jones’s Harlan Eagleton is a very different woman from Feliciana.

Lozano writes such loving, intimate, and insightful portraits of women (whether cishet, queer or trans) and their fluid identities. I found myself falling in love with each of the characters as if they were my own friends, family, lovers. And her writing (with credit also to Cleary’s translation) resonates with delightfully worded truths about everything from snakes and their “withdrawn serpentine demeanor” to falling in love and how you give everything and “the other person just keeps it like it’s no big deal,” all within the space of just a few pages.

The point? It's a great novel—don’t be put off if it takes a minute before you’re hooked and definitely don’t miss it.

I love the premise of this book, and I loved the translator's note, but stylistically, this book didn't work for me. The endless compounding sentences, the characters dancing in and out, the shifting narrative--it became hard to engage in the book in a way I wanted to.

The Witches is a novel told from two distinct points of view. While these two narratives are well deliniated, it's the style of Feliciana's story that bogged down the novel for me. It was a bit rambling and hard to read. Trigger warnings all around for this one. Loved how deeply seeded this book was in lore about curanderas and healing traditions.

This was fine. I can recognize that it was beautifully written and I did enjoy that. But I found myself having a hard time connecting to any of the characters, which made it hard to stay engaged with the story. I saw someone compare it to Fernanda Melchor, and I would definitely agree with that assessment. Their styles are very similar and similarly evocative. Not a favorite, but I am appreciative of it.