by Gayl Jones
First published 1999
Harlan Jane Eagleton travels small towns by bus, healing minds and bodies through faith. She converts skeptics and restores the broken. But Harlan carries her own mysteries. Before becoming a healer, she managed a minor rock star. Before that, she worked as a beautician. She had affairs with her client's ex-husband and an Afro-German horse dealer. Somewhere along the way, she lost her own husband, a medical anthropologist who now travels Africa with a medicine woman. Harlan tells her story backward, moving from her present life as a healer deeper into her past. Each memory brings her closer to the truth she seeks: the story of her first healing. Through the rich language of the black South, her tale unfolds in reverse, revealing how pain, anger, and love shaped her journey toward becoming someone who heals others.
Genres: fiction, literary-fiction, contemporary, african-american-historical-fiction
Vibes: emotional, intimate, lyrical
Tropes: unreliable-narrator
Setting: Africa, South
Period: 20th-century
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