From bestselling author and international sensation Paulo Coelho, a novel set in a small village about a young, poor barmaid whose wager with the devil leads to a spiritual transformation.

A stranger arrives at the remote village of Viscos, carrying with him a backpack containing a notebook and eleven gold bars. He comes searching for the answer to a question that torments him: Are human beings, in essence, good or evil?

Twenty years ago, a darkness rose up out of the blistering heat of the Arizona desert and descended upon the Walker family of Tucson. A personified evil, a serial killer named Andrew Carlisle, brought blood and terror into their world, nearly murdering Diana Ladd Walker and her young son, Davy. Now much has changed. The family has grown larger. There's Lani, the beloved adopted daughter—a beautiful Native American teenager "kissed by the