The heroine of Maria-Pilar Landver's magically real novel, Stam, is all too vulnerable to others' deceitfulness. When a man posing as an old flame looks her up, she's launched on a rousing journey into her torturous past. The man is not who he appears to be, but an abusive stalker, and our heroine must recognize the danger before it's too late.
It is from the edge of this abyss that our heroine forces herself to retrace her steps across several continents: she must revisit everything she has assumed to be true-from the sincerity of her first marriage to the minutiae of childhood-through a questioning lens.
She's not alone in this quest for clarity. New friends, old family members, and even her dog help her on this voyage. She begins to tease out the reasons for her vulnerability: personal memories take on a philosophical quality as she struggles for identity and for freedom from an insidious web.
As the stalker becomes desperate, our heroine must draw on her inner strength if she's going to break out from the suffocating cage of fear and doubt that has ensnared her for too long.
About the Author:
Maria-Pilar Landver was born in Santiago, Chile, and has lived in many different places. She received her degree in Spanish literature and Ibero-American studies from the University of Wisconsin. Before moving to her current home in Portland, Oregon, Landver taught Spanish and spent ten years in the Middle East.
Landver has read her fair share of magical realism and allegory and was influenced by authors such as Allende, Garcia Marquez, Kafka, Fuentes, and Orwell to write her own novel chronicling a journey into the human psyche. In addition to Stam, Landver is the author of Giddy Godspeed and the Felicity Flower.
Landver enjoys mushroom hunting, listening to and making music, hiking, swimming, driving fast, and cooking. She has three children who were the inspiration for Stam.
