From the entrance into my forthcoming novel . . .

*Altar of La Santa Muerte - Nogales, AZ*

La Santa Muerte – Our Lady of Holy Death – is the feminine embodiment of Death in Latin American cultures. She is also known as the Bony Lady and the White Sister. Her devotees describe her as pure warmth, a friend, and a personal spirit that gladly involves herself in the frivolities and antics of woman- and mankind. That which is vital to her followers, also becomes imperative to her. She is revered as the bridge between the living and the dead, light and dark, growth and decay, love and fear. Her images and folklore have arisen, evolved, and flown from the mists of pre-Columbian times. She has been banned by the Catholic Church and labeled as an outlawed cult. Nonetheless, those faithful to La Santa Muerte number in the tens of millions today.

*Jaroslav Panuška, Death Looking into the Window of One Dying, 1900.*