Six tales of a dark beauty that throb with disturbing themes: the legitimacy of revenge, incest as survival, indigenous witchcraft versus Japanese wisdom, the body as a corpse we inhabit. Rivero's stories pierce the reader like a wound, but in the end also offer possibilities of love, justice and hope. Told with a fierce and fragile lyricism that probes the abysses of the human soul, in [I]Fresh Dirt From the Grave[/I] Giovanna Rivero reworks the boundaries of the gothic to engage with pre-Columbian ritual, folk tales, sci-fi and eroticism.