Desert Creatures

In a future American West hollowed out by ecological decay, a girl named Magdala seeks a miracle cure for her clubfoot in the mythical city of Las Vegas, a place teeming with violent sinners and mysterious, magical saints. In this multi-part story spanning decades of her life, she travels through the desert—which is full of both surrealist horrors like formerly human chimeras, and more mundane dangers like bandits and death cults—and comes of age in a resource-starved world where faith seems both necessary and futile, in award-winning short fiction writer Kay Chronister’s debut novel.