One of the best-known works by one of Venezuela's leading novelists, this novel, translated into English for the first time, depicts the eccentricities of rural life through the innocent eyes of a small boy. Lame Marinferinfero, a man who castrates goats for a living, invites a little boy to accompany him over the rooftops of Altagracia, a small provincial town near the Venezuelan savannah. Hopping lithely on his crutches from one roof to the next, the man drags the boy on a fantastical journey, not only to explore other perspectives of the peaceful family environment where his childhood took place, but also to discover the new horizons that can be glimpsed from the heights.Populated by a variety of colorful characters, Altagracia is transmuted into a bizarre and wonderful mixture of imagination and reality, of past and present, of nostalgia and of a striving to fulfill the hopes and ideals of youth. Garmendia's luminous prose reflects the wonder of this world, but it is a world that becomes increasingly harsh as childhood slips by.