This "genre-shredding" (Tor.com) feminist dystopian eco-horror traces
a girl's coming-of-age on a post-apocalyptic trek through the Southwest,
for fans of The Last of Us.
What compromise does survival require of a woman--and can she ever
unlearn the instincts that have kept her alive?
Eleven-year-old Magdala and her father have been exiled from their home;
they flee through the harsh landscape of the American West, searching
for refuge. As violence pursues them, they join a handful of survivors
on a pilgrimage to the holy city of Las Vegas, where it is said that
vigilante saints reside, bright with neon power. Magdala, born with a
clubfoot, is going to be healed. But when faced with the strange horrors
of the Sonoran Desert, one by one the pilgrims fall victim to a hideous
sickness--leaving Magdala to fend for herself.
After surviving for seven years on her own, Magdala is tired of waiting
for her miracle. Magdala turns her gaze to Las Vegas once more, and this
time, nothing will stop her. She recruits an exiled Vegas priest at
gunpoint to serve as her guide, and the pair form a fragile alliance as
they navigate the darkest and strangest reaches of the desert, on a
journey that takes her further from salvation even as she nears the holy
city.
In this moving debut novel, acclaimed short fiction writer Kay
Chronister twines the strange, terrible beauty of the desert into a
deeply human exploration of hope in the midst of devastation. With
ferocious imagination and poetic precision, Desert Creatures is a
haunting story of survivors finding meaning after trauma--and of
endurance at the expense of redemption.
