Mad Prairie: Stories and a Novella (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780820360744)

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 1980s dance tracks while nudging him toward darker plans. And across several stories, we follow Miriam, a young overachiever hell-bent on leaving her home state who is 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.

Author: Kate McIntyre
ISBN-10: 0820360740
ISBN-13: 9780820360744
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Language: English
Published: 10/01/2021
Pages: 176
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.50lbs
Size: 8.40h x 8.00w x 0.50d