Karin Anderson: Peculiar Stories from the Arid West
Before Us Like A Land of Dreams, available now from Torrey House Press
Before Us Like a Land of Dreams follows a disheartened mother traveling an evocative route through the arid West. As her narration fades, the ancestral dead speak directly: a ragged Mormon boy yearns after a Shoshone family. A defeated polygamous wife shuts her mouth for good. A hoarder’s queer son demolishes the artifacts of his lonely Idaho childhood. Descendants of British squatters sustain family delusions until a devastating suicide shatters their royal dreams. An elite colonial tribe, made from New England green, gradually awaken to the stark blue of the Great Salt Lake. The dead yield no answers; they simply conjure bright mortal moments set in iconic – and diminishing – American places.
Sharps and Flats 