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 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. | Great American Desert by Terese Svoboda, Paperback | Indigo Chapters