Boris Says the Words

"Radioactive waste sites act as refugee housing. A giant metal bird grazes the countryside. A gelatinous body-switching drug is sought to help perform folk healings. Most of the world is unusable, a victim of runaway nuclear disasters. The future is a landfill. Read all about it...In the ruined and irradiated village of Bulm, Pavel helps a drug-addicted witch and her deathly ill son survive. In the American Midwest, Katya Mirov falls in love with Alejandro Po, a baker coping with multiple sclerosis. Everyone is, in some way, tangled in a web with Boris, rural healer and speaker of "the tea words." When spoken the right way, the words can move disease outside the body--but the disease then must transfer into another innocent person. Those around Boris begin to learn the chaotic carousel of words, and the fabric of reality shreds. This is a cockeyed novel of lunatic speculative vision, touched by elements of horror and science fiction. And sad, sad, sad. -- from back cover