PRAIRIE GOTHIC

Prairie Gothic
By J. M. Hayes
Poisoned Pen Press
February 2003
ISBN: 1-59058-050-8
Hardcover $24.95
276 Pages

There is the old saying about truth being stranger than fiction and this book definitely has a ring of truth in it. With the story taking place in a small town in Kansas during a snowstorm, this delightfully humorous misadventures of the town’s sheriff and his family and co-workers makes this a fun read.

The sheriff’s deputy is known for his lack of intelligence, his teenaged daughters (one is a foster daughter) are both names Heather so they are called the Heathers or One of Two and Two of Two, his brother nicknamed Mad Dog believes that he is a Cheyenne shaman and I won’t even try to explain the family that is involved with this story.

The plot encircles two incidents in which an elderly man, Tommie Irons, dies of cancer and wants to be buried in the natural manner of his ancestors, the Choctaw, but he really isn’t Indian at all. In order to do this, he makes arrangements with Mad Dog, the sheriff’s half-brother, who is a native Cheyenne, and then takes the dead body from the rest home unofficially. While this is happening, a dead baby is also found at the rest home in the arms of one of the more eccentric residents who has been known for carrying around a doll anyway. The doll was just replaced by the dead baby.

While discussing bloodlines, Nazi treasures, a bull named Black Death, a wolf-hybrid, a hidden prison in a house with an old lady caged in it, another old lady wearing red sneakers and pretending to be Dorothy from the land of Oz, skeletons found in a stream, incest within families, abortions, cages in a type of laboratory, not to mention people who definitely aren’t what they seem, and rebellious teenaged daughters, J.M. Hayes has created a delightfully fast-paced story that leaves the reader laughing out-loud with an uneasy feeling of suspicion for those small towns in Kansas.