"The Curing Woman" is the short story of a Spanish woman named Dona Marcelina Trujillo Benidorm who learns the ancient art of curing from her mother and two other healers and eventually settles in California where she successfully heals the son of a friend. The story begins by establishing the aristocratic heritage of the protagonist, Dona Marcelina Trujillo Benidorm, who is born into a wealthy and highly respected family in Spain. The girl's parents were generous with charities but never associated with people less fortunate than they. Marcelina is the only daughter in this family of four children and was conceived by her father and one of the servant girls working in the home.

Marcelina's birth mother is forced to leave the home at the end of her ten-year service and begs to take the now nine-year-old Marcelina with her but Mrs. Benidorm, Marcelina's father's...