"Candela is irresistibly clever and bawdy - she is as partial to citing the Greeks and pondering their philosophical models as she is to talking dirty about her unsuspecting relatives. And she has been known to speculate, at the dinner table, on the relation between a person's eating habits and their sexual proclivities.". "Candela works as an embalmer at the local mortuary, where one night she is unexpectedly thrown from her old ways into a new life. At the end of her shift she finds she must embalm the chief of a gypsy clan, who has left instructions that he be buried with his hat, his cane, and a photograph of the king. Her days are changed forever when she discovers that the cane holds more than just the old man's wishes."--BOOK JACKET.