Cursed by her over-sized feet and an extraordinary sense of smell -- which makes her a world-class Ecological Malodor Detector -- perplexed by the disappearance of her beloved Tío Ramon, confused by her upbringing in Ohio as an immigrant from a little known Caribbean island called Quichemala, Anabela Quintal returns to her birthplace to confront her failures. There, with her best friend, a renowned Santa Fe psychic, she finds a magic world, sadly polluted by the realities of nuclear production, waste cleanup and global capitalism. Here Time and the Fate of the Earth hang in the balance, dependent for salvation on the supernatural powers of a short shaman, Pirates of Chaos, eco-feminists, mobs of moths and the Smoking Mirror, a guerrilla group led by an anthropology professor with a feline alter ego, as well as a biology professor who believes that water hyacinths are the key to cleaning the environment. In Quichemala, Time is circular and sacred, but in El Norte, Time is disastrously linear and human evolution has bogged down thanks to greedy corporate shenanigans and political sleaze. The island has nearly reached the Moment of the Haab, when the era is supposed to end and the Calendar change to 2012. But will the Haab happen? Will Quichemala endure the onslaught of nuclear waste dumping, a dictator's corruption, a Corporado without conscience, a French nuclear-test stopover, the Magenta Diamond, evil twins and wicked triplets, a snoozing populace, plutonium smugglers, the lack of mangoes, an otherworldly basketball game and the renegade Serpent of Time? Will the people of Quichemala survive the crisis to reach 2012, when human domination of the Earth will at last be over? And through it all, will Anabela Quintal find her True Face, her Second Heart, her Right Work, and the Meaning of Pink?
Jennifer Heath is a writer, editor and curator, the author of numerous works of fiction and non-fiction, including SuperColón: Admiral of the Ocean Sea, illustrated by Kristine Smock, Black Velvet: The Art We Love to Hate, A House White With Sorrow, On the Edge of Dream: The Women of Celtic Myth and Legend, The Echoing Green: The Garden in Myth and Memory, The Scimitar and The Veil: Extraordinary Women of Islam. Her edited anthologies include The Veil: Women Writers on Its History, Lore, and Politics, Uncontained: Writers and Photographers in the Garden and on the Margins, Primal Picnics: Writers Invent Creation Myths for their Favorite Foods and Land of the Unconquerable: The Lives of Contemporary Afghan Women. Her traveling art exhibitions include Black Velvet: The Art We Love to Hate and The Veil: Visible and Invisible Spaces. www.theveilbook.com. S. Bell is a graphic novelist, painter, illustrator and freelance writer and editor living in San Francisco. Bell has a BFA in fine art (focus on painting and print) from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and is currently an MFA candidate in the Illustration Department (focus on graphic novel) at Academy of Art University, San Francisco. Her work has been published in many mainstream and alternative publishers, among them the University of California Press and Fantagraphics Books. She has been the recipient of five arts grants and she is the author of The Urban Fairytales. The second volume is forthcoming. www.theurbanfairytales.com
