Sue Rainsford

Ada and her father, touched by the power to heal illness, live on the edge of a village where they help sick locals--or "Cures"--by cracking open their damaged bodies or temporarily burying them in the reviving, dangerous Ground nearby. Ada, a being both more and less than human, is mostly uninterested in the Cures, until she meets a man named Samson. When they strike up an affair, to the displeasure of her father and Samson's widowed, pregnant sister,...