Alejandro Morales's short story "The Curing Woman" was first published in 1986 in The Americas Review. It was reprinted in the anthology Short Fiction by Hispanic Writers of the United States (Houston, 1993). "The Curing Woman" draws on the traditional Mexican folktale, but it also possesses elements of social realism and magical realism. Set in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Spain, Mexico, and California, it describes the life of Doña Marcelina Trujillo Benidorm. Marcelina is a young woman who leaves her home at the age of thirteen to be reunited with her mother. Her mother, who is a traditional healer or curandera, trains Marcelina in the healing arts. Marcelina then travels to Mexico, where she apprentices herself to two more master healers. She then makes her way to Simons, California, where she becomes widely known for her practice of the art of curanderismo. The story centers on one cure in particular, that of a boy named Delfino, who suffers from a malady that cannot be explained or cured by other doctors.