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hese five stories will leave the reader stunned by unforgettable characters, who are, by turns, superstitious, stubborn, comic, and, even, grotesque. The setting of these stories: a Macondo-like small town, where miracles, and would-be miracles, can and do happen in a backwater of history, which is actually the battle zone of the human heart, in conflict with itself. From the title piece, in which a shadowy artist, on the ceiling of a small town cafe, creates murals of a startling and paradoxical richness; to the plaintive monologue of an elderly farm-woman, standing in the way of the plow that threatens the graves of babies she has sworn to protect; to the marvelous powers of an overworked faith-healer: these stories---shaped from the lore, superstitions, and history of the Dakota Germans---reveal the intense inner world of an unknown ethnic group, working out its destiny on the immensities of the American prairie.