André Wilms

The main heroine, she wields a "Wicked Eye" darkness tamed by the power of a pure heart, which she conceals underneath an eye-patch. She is cautious of strangers and she is also rather clumsy, often tripping over and forgetting things.

A group of indigenous leaders travel from Paraguay to Bolivia to meet the Guarani and seek advice to solve the drought and confront their political situation.

A farmer's wife is seduced into running away from her stolid older husband by a city slicker, who enslaves her in a brothel.

Three struggling artists try to make passable livings in Paris despite setbacks and tragedies. Three penniless artists become friends in modern-day Paris: Rodolfo, an Albanian painter with no visa, Marcel, a playwright and magazine editor with no publisher, and Schaunard, a post-modernist composer of execrable noise. Rodolfo falls in love with Mimi, a barmaid. The day he asks her to move in with him, he is deported. Six months later, he sneaks back to Paris, and Mimi leaves her new boyfriend to be with him. Conflicts arise, especially around their poverty, and soon Mimi and Rodolfo separate, as do Marcel and his Musette. The three men scrape together a meal to celebrate All Saints' Day, and Mimi arrives, ill. Can her friends bring her back to health? Can love rekindle? —<jhailey@hotmail.com>