August 29, 2022
This stomach-roiling dystopian western from Chronister (Thin Places) follows Magdala, age nine, when she starts on her yearslong pilgrimage to Las Vegas, now a holy city housing the relics of a saint she hopes will cure her clubfoot. If The Canterbury Tales was set in future Sonoran and Mojave deserts, it might look a little like this, as Magdala, her father, and their companions tell stories to pass the time. Across the novel’s six sections, Magdala grows into a young adult and becomes hardened by her experiences with cruelty in the desert. Chronister offers little respite in what becomes an increasingly hopeless journey. The only real moment of kindness comes from the “cactus-sitters,” a group who meditate on top of cacti and are generous to travelers who stumble across them; the rest of this far-future world has devolved into an every person for themselves society and the barren environment only fuels the characters’ individualism. The result is challenging reading made all the more difficult by how plausible it feels as a model of the disastrous effects of climate change and scarcity. Readers who can stomach the unrelenting bleakness and depression will find plenty to hold their interest in Chronister’s strange and frightening vision. Agent: Laura Cameron, Transatlantic.
October 4, 2022
DEBUT Chronister's debut novel is a dark fantasy story about the Wild West reborn after a cataclysm. In the near future, the American Southwest has become a desiccated wasteland filled with dangers both human and inhuman. This is the world in which nine-year-old Magdala finds herself: first as a daughter who needs her father's protection, then as one of many pilgrims searching for salvation near the holy city of Las Vegas, and finally as a woman who is tempered by the harsh light of the desert sun into a survivor. This genre-bending story evokes Cormac McCarthy's brutal depictions of the American West and life after the end of everything, and there are mutated horrors wandering the desert that could have been conceived in Jeff VanderMeer's fever dreams. The book, however, culminates in a new and original species of post-apocalyptic fiction where attempts at recreating civilization are anything but civilized. VERDICT Ultimately, this is a harrowing coming-of-age tale of a girl growing up in a world where not many things are allowed to grow tall and strong.
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