A Tiny Taste of My Novel

Ρaco’s voice slid deep into the smoke-filled room. Silence sifted into the space between his breaths. Crying with the anguish of a people who had left their homeland centuries ago, he carried a song that still knew its way inside the heartbeat of the earth. Eight-year-old Duende listened. Twenty-eight-year-old Ingrid barely remembered this mysterious melody that came from within.

In the small village of Málaga, on the coast of Spain, where the Mediterranean Sea separated Europe from Africa, from the Arabic cries of “Allah,” and from the Jews’ search for their homeland, Paco and his Gypsy song remained. Duende, raised in this culture, knew this song and its origin, yet Ingrid, tossed into the modern reality of separation, had yet to find her way back.

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This is the story of both, woven together by magical vines carrying the blood of the earth and a forgotten way of living.

 

My novel’s prologue provides a taste of my recently released novel, Child of Duende, an adventure of a twenty-eight-year-old German journalist, Ingrid, who returns to her childhood home of Málaga, Spain, to cover a remarkable story: on Señor Ramos’s vineyard, the vines are growing out of control. What’s more, they appear to be bleeding. Can it possibly be true? Ingrid feels a mysterious connection to the increasingly strange events taking place in her hometown, but why?

As Ingrid’s story interweaves with that of an eight-year-old child, whose grandmother fates her with the name Duende—a word that refers to the spirit of the earth that one must awaken from within—Ingrid embarks on a journey of personal rediscovery. Duende dances with Gypsies; travels below the sea with an earth spirit; speaks with her grandmother’s spirit; and has dreams that deeply transform her reality and Ingrid’s. Ultimately, Ingrid’s return home reveals a truth that has been buried in the ground for millennia. Described by world-renowned teacher and award-winning author Sandra Ingerman as “a beautiful story that will take you into magical and mystical realms,” Child of Duende is a journey home.

**For more information on my novel or on my teaching and healing work, visit my newly-revised website: http://www.michelleadam.net

**Above Illustration is one of several Child of Duende Interior Illustrations by Jenna Kass.

(My regular blog will return soon, with novel passages interspersed. Stay tuned!)