Suffering will be second nature for Salvador by the end of Luisa Maria Celis' debut, historical novel, Arrows.

The missionary will be bashed about in a deadly storm, rescued from falling overboard, taken seriously ill, twice skewered by arrows, attacked by a horde of hungry red ants, stabbed in the chest, punched, battered and finally tortured by the folks at the Spanish Inquisition. In between injuries and mishaps, he engages in self-flagellation.

And that list of woes doesn't include his broken heart. It's Spain's Golden Age in the mid 16th-century and the evangelist has left his monastery in Spain to join an expedition sent to re-conquer territory in the Caracas valley. Two previously vanquished expeditions failed to take revenge on the Carib leader, Guacaipuro, who left the original Spanish settlement in ashes ten years earlier....