Great American Desert Stories Author:Terese Svoboda 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 ... more »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.