Great American Desert
Stories
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- $28.99
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- $28.99
Publisher Description
Water, its use and abuse, trickles through Great American Desert, a story collection by Terese Svoboda that spans the misadventures of the prehistoric Clovis people to the wanderings of a forlorn couple around a pink pyramid in a sci-fi prairie. In “Dutch Joe,” the eponymous hero sees the future from the bottom of a well in the Sandhills, while a woman tries to drag her sister back from insanity in “Dirty Thirties.” In “Bomb Jockey,” a local Romeo disposes of leaky bombs at South Dakota’s army depot, while a family quarrels in “Ogallala Aquifer” as a thousand trucks dump chemical waste from a munitions depot next to their land. Bugs and drugs are devoured in “Alfalfa,” a disc jockey talks her way out of a knifing in “Sally Rides,” and an updated Pied Piper begs parents to reconsider in “The Mountain.” The consequences of the land’s mistreatment is epitomized in the final story by a discovery inside a pink pyramid.
In her arresting and inimitable style, Svoboda’s delicate handling of the complex dynamics of family and self seeps into every sentence of these first-rate short stories about what we do to the world around us—and what it can do to us.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Svoboda (Anything That Burns You) transports readers to a fantastical American West in this collection of stories that surprise, disturb, and amuse in equal measure. In each tale, water and the barren landscape cause problems for the characters. In the opening story, "Camp Clovis," the pre-modern Clovis people are massacred, possibly for a dream-inducing plant they possess. In "Major Long Talks to His Horse," a 19th century expedition sets off across the West, only for most of the crew to die or fall ill. The collection's standout, "Bomb Jockey," follows a courtship during WWII between Hump, a munitions worker who buries defective bombs at a South Dakota munitions plant, and Margaret, a politician's daughter and beauty queen. Svoboda's panicked, passionate prose mirrors the excitement of their torrid, dangerous affair. Readers of speculative fiction will enjoy the LSD-fueled insect feast in "Ogallala Aquifer," the morbid reimagining of the Pied Piper in "The Mountain," and the frontiersman well digger who discovers a way to see the future in "Dutch Joe." Svoboda's desert-themed stories wonderfully capture the wonder and nastiness of the American West.
