The Village of Bom Jesus: Fiction

These interconnected stories capture with sympathy and grace the mystery, beauty and squalor of life in an isolated Amazonian village in Brazil. The title is somewhat misleading: the roguish cat Bom Jesus (``the Good Jesus'' in Portuguese) is the protagonist of the first tale and makes appearances throughout, but the book's real subject matter is the way people, stripped of civilized veneer, relate to nature and to each other. In ``A New Kind of Curandeiro,'' an outsider comes to the village to escape an unhappy love affair; participating in the exorcism of a girl possessed by a dead woman, he gains a new reputation as a faith healer ( curandeiro ), and his broken heart begins to heal. The powerful and disturbing ``The Swamp of Dreams'' tells of a hunter who ventures deep into the rain forest and becomes bewitched by his lush environment. In ``Daughter of the Sun,'' a girl's abusive mother forces her to spend hours each day locked in a wardrobe; thus isolated, the girl cultivates a beautiful voice that eventually takes her far away from the village to a successful singing career. In this excellent debut, Hill, who spent five years in Brazil's Amazon basin, displays reverence for the rain forest and the people who dwell on its borders. ( Apr. )