Of love and other demons

The novel requires readers to consider the possibility that the distinction between fantasy and reality is hazy. How can we know the truth? How do we account for what we cannot explain? Apparently it all depends on perspective. The novel acknowledges that some people will find answers in science and some people will find them in religion. Others will merely admit to the uncertainty of life.The novel begins with the report of the emptying of the crypts at the Convent of Santa Clara. This is where a skull is found of a twelve-year-old girl with a huge amount of copper colored hair growing out of it. The author remembers the legend of the twelve-year-old girl from two hundred years ago who died of rabies. The scene then shifts to a city in colonial New Grenada, in what is now Columbia. Sierva is the twelve-year-old girl, and is going to the market on her birthday. She is slightly bitten on the ankle by a dog that is later found to be infected with rabies. Sierva is being raised by the women of the slave quarter in the house of her father, the Marquis. She is wild and difficult to deal with in any case.