Poso Wells

In the squalid settlement of Poso Wells, women have been regularly disappearing but the authorities have shown little interest. When the leading presidential candidate, a pompous huckster, comes to town for a routine campaign rally, he and his entourage are electrocuted in a macabre, darkly hilarious accident witnessed by a throng of astonished spectators. The sole survivor—next in line for the presidency—inexplicably disappears from sight.

Gustavo Varas, a principled… (more)

In the squalid settlement of Poso Wells, women have been regularly disappearing but the authorities have shown little interest. When the leading presidential candidate, a pompous huckster, comes to town for a routine campaign rally, he and his entourage are electrocuted in a macabre, darkly hilarious accident witnessed by a throng of astonished spectators. The sole survivor—next in line for the presidency—inexplicably disappears from sight.

Gustavo Varas, a principled journalist, picks up the trail, which leads him into a violent, lawless underworld, and ultimately to a strange group of almost supernatural blind men. Bella Altamirano, a fearless local woman, is on her own crusade to pierce the settlement's code of silence and impunity, ignoring the regular death threats that result from her efforts. It turns out that the disappearance of the candidate and those of the women are intimately connected, and not just to a local crime wave, but to a multinational magnate's plan to strip mine the country's ecologically sensitive cloud forest. />

Poso Wells plunges its readers into the dark passages of a savage world where the only safety lies in having the good fortune not to cross paths with the vicious tentacles of power, where things are as uncontrollable and overheated as the lava from the smoking volcano to which the story is leading us. But amidst the chaos and corruption, someone gets in the way—someone who wants to know what's really going on behind the curtain of smoke.