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My eyes grow heavy as I reach for the night that moves beyond my grasp. I can't remember when it was any other way and I ask the Ancestors as I try to sleep, "Will I see again what I have seen before, before my last days? My parents, the Elders, and You, all our power, strength, wisdom that lives beyond the white on top of our mountain. Are you lost forever? Or is it me who is lost?"

As a young girl, Sesantea lives high on the Chicon in Peru in the heart of her traditional mountain community.

When an injury leaves her nearly blind and she becomes a burden to the community, her life is upended.

Sent to an orphanage for the discarded, she is renamed Maria and looks after a baby called Pietro. She lives in constant fear when she discovers what happens to the children as they outgrow the orphanage.

Her salvation is a local priest, who sees the extraordinary in this almost sightless youngster, and arranges for her to be a mother's helper to a visiting family. When it's time for the Aventis to return home, they ask Maria to go with them.

Here, Maria confronts the terrain of a seemingly perfect family with their own guarded secrets, finds her place in the chaos of New York City and struggles to discover who she is as a woman.

Maria, daughter of the Chicon.