Maria-Pilar Landver

Stam Maria-Pilar Landver

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.