Great American Desert

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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.