Mad Prairie
Subtitle: Stories and a Novella
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 2021
Language: eng
Number of pages: 176
ISBN-13: 9780820360744
Subjects: American literature
Description: "In this scary, funny, and slyly political short story collection, Kate McIntyre conjures a fever dream of contemporary Kansas. Boundaries between fantasy and reality blur, and grotesque acts birth strange progeny. A mother must choose between her children and her personal safety when her husband steadily excavates a moat around their country home, his very own little border wall. A Kansas politician grapples with international notoriety after an accident traps salt miners hundreds of feet underground--in the same salt mine where his brother was murdered. A bigot's newly transplanted liver gives him a taste for upbeat 80s dance tracks while nudging him toward darker plans. And, across several stories, we follow Miriam, a young overachiever hellbent on leaving her home state, who's lured back after college to teach elementary school in a rural community. In Culvert, Kansas, Miriam finds closed mouths and big secrets: the toxic waste storage for the battery factory leaches into the soil; the hog farm waste lagoons have sprung leaks; and her students, at turns psychic, lethargic, and aggressive, might not be human"--