cover image The Drought

The Drought

Patricia Fulton. CreateSpace, $14.50 paper (400p) ISBN 978-1-4680-7480-2

In%C2%A0the%C2%A0small Texas community of Junction, a boy named Barry Tanner steals an irreplaceable piece of sports memorabilia: a baseball from the 1975 World Series between Boston and Cincinnati. His friend Luke Casteel%E2%80%94unaware of%C2%A0the%C2%A0ball's value%E2%80%94tosses it into a drainage pipe, only to chase after the baseball when he learns its worth. But Luke never re-emerges from the drainage pipe. The strange tragedies affecting%C2%A0the%C2%A0town don't end there: two hunters targeting javelina find%C2%A0the%C2%A0tables turned when%C2%A0the%C2%A0wild pigs atypically turn violent and claim one of their lives.%C2%A0The evil stalking Junction may be linked to a voodoo campaign of terror in Reserve, La., which is plagued by%C2%A0the%C2%A0same devastating%C2%A0drought%C2%A0as Junction. Fulton's prose often scintillates ("The%C2%A0drought%C2%A0entered quietly, wreaking havoc with%C2%A0the%C2%A0spindly fingers of a miser, its magnitude measured in negatives like lack, want and deficiency"), but%C2%A0the%C2%A0gore is often needlessly explicit and the characters underdeveloped.