BEWITCHED LANDS is a novel of conflicting passions and loyalties, a fascinating tale of long-latent-and at last over-violence on a feudal hacienda deep in the lush, uncharted Chaco region of Bolivia. The principal characters of this unusual and sophisticated story are: Don Pedro Vidal, aging and absolute master of the vast isolated Hacienda El Mataral: Dona Maria de Vidal, his pretty, pathetic, and unhappy young wife; Carlos Vidal, Don Pedro's son by a former wife, dead under mysterious circumstances; Mr. Treweek, a very English petroleum prospector-and the sympathetic narrator, Carlos Vidal, educated at military school in France, has been paroled in his father's custody after participating in an abortive revolt against his country's dictator. Carlos is in rebellion against the medieval social ideas dominating his native land and summed up in his own father. The arrival of Mr. Treweek and his companion, in search of petroleum whose existence Don Pedro wishes to deny, galvanizes Carlos into emotions, thoughts, and at last actions that lead inevitably to a series of violent crises. In the fabric of this brilliantly colored novel, Carlos's love for his stepmother is but one thread.