What do we inherit from the generations before us—magic, shame, resilience, silence? In J.E. Ortega’s novel The Ordinary Bruja (coming November 4, 2025), Marisol Espinal returns to her hometown of Willowshade, Ohio, after her mother’s death and finds herself face-to-face with the family secrets she’s been running from. The story unfolds with an atmosphere of both dread and wonder, as Marisol confronts not only the haunting presence of Hallowthorn Hill but also the pieces of her own identity she’s been taught to bury.
The novel is steeped in Dominican folklore and written with a lyricism that brings the supernatural to life. The hill itself becomes a character—watching, waiting, whispering—and what it wants is Marisol’s surrender to fear. But Ortega makes clear that the greater threat isn’t the folklore itself, but the way Marisol has been taught to erase herself: her culture, her curls, her curves, her magic. The suspense is as much psychological as it is spectral, and the real horror comes from how shame and generational trauma can consume us if we let them.
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