Faith Healer

Ms. Smith demonstrates her special talent for the magical realism genre in telling the unforgettable story of Victor, a penniless intersex bastard who received the gift of healing from the spirit of a sacred mountain. After having fallen along with his patrons in the corrupt regime ruling from the Malacañang Palace in Manila years earlier, Victor has created on the surface a peaceful, if lonely and uncertain, life for himself as the caregiver “Tita Vee” in a California long-term care facility. Privately, Victor continues to be tormented by the loss of his gifts, those that he loved, his country, and his God until his own salvation ironically comes in the ordinary yet unexpected tragedy that involves the twisted heart of a cruel racist. Victor is the unlikely yet perfect hero or heroine to anyone who is no stranger to living life as neither one thing or another – not a man or a woman, not a fraud or a miracle, not black or white or Filipino–and who, by choice or not, lives on the very edge of where any other human might fear to journey.