Ramona Stewart has fashioned a black velvet straitjacket which is the next best thing to Rosemary's Baby (which we didn't YA—what a difference three years make). Among the amenities—attractive New York interiors to oppose the Puerto Rican barrio—are Norah who tells and writes this story, her two children. . . and her brother Joel. He's been leading a sketchy life—a trip to Tangier; a pad in the East Village; and now, on the telephone, he's definitely not himself. He speaks with a new voice if at all, and after a short stay in Bellevue he comes to live with her where he has spells of amnesia just before the girl—his girl—is found murdered, her head hanging from an ivy planter. All of this relates to Puerto Rican Espiritismo and the brojas with their spells and exorcisms who practice the demonic arts not the least of which is total appropriation and absorption. The reader's.
