- The dying days of World War I, the Spanish flu devastates the small town of Incarnation, Texas. The sheriff closes the church and quarantines the dying in the schoolhouse. The townsfolk huddle alone in their houses to avoid infection. Each new day brings fresh corpses. But something worse than the flu is coming. Verge Strömberg, son of the domineering town pastor, is a sickly boy who lives in a world of books. His mother disappeared when he was seven, his older brother ran away. Now his father leaves him to tend a church in another county. That’s when the Muladona begins to visit him. Every night, the Muladona, a doomed soul transformed into the Devil’s mule, visits Verge and forces him to listen to a horrific tale. Each night, as Verge huddles under his bed sheets, the monster’s supernatural tales tear his soul apart. Verge’s search for the demonic creature’s true identity leads him through the dark history of Incarnation, from the murder of the Indians by the Spanish settlers, to the disappearance of his mother. In the end, Verge will have to confront the Muladona alone to rescue the memory of his mother and to save his immortal soul.
Author
Eric Stener Carlson (Minnesota, 1969) is an author currently based in Geneva, Switzerland. He wrote his first book, "I Remember Julia: Voices of the Disappeared" (Temple University Press, 1996), when he was right out of college. It is based on his work with the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team identifying the remains of people killed by the military dictatorship in the 1970s. After working for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, he wrote his second book, "The Pear Tree: Is Torture Ever Justified?" (Clarity Press, 2006), a very personal investigation into the use of torture and its moral consequences. Eric became a novelist with the publication of "The Saint Perpetuus Club of Buenos Aires" (Tartarus Press, 2009), a surreal, supernatural mystery. He followed this up with the novel, "Muladona" (Tartarus Press, 2016), "Anxiety of Ghosts" (Amazon, 2017) and his first short story collection, "GAS" (Abraxas Press, 2018). He has a number of other novel projects in the works. His short stories and articles have appeared in journals in the US, UK, Argentina and Spain. Eric holds a BA in International Affairs from The American University, an MA in International Affairs from Columbia University and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California at Santa Barbara. He was also a Fulbright scholar affiliated with the University of Buenos Aires. Eric frequently lectures and is always happy to give talks to book clubs and universities.
