Great American Desert

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. [em](Mar.) [/em]