Tulum

Narrated by a quirky, garrulous, eccentric gringo with a shady past who has been hiding out in Tulum, Quintana Roo, Mexico, for decades, David Seth Michaels’s magical, second novella, Tulum, describes the beginning of the narrator’s friendship with an unusual Mayan Curandero and his becoming an apprentice to him.

The narrator initially seeks out the curandero in desperation for relief from an annoying medical problem. But he later wonders whether the curandero is playing frightening, mischi...