“Chronister’s futuristic, dog-eat-dog Sonoran and Mojave deserts are as devastating as they are inventive. . . . Chronister cleverly deploys and subverts horror, dystopian and western genres alike in this razor-sharp novel.” —Shelf Awareness ★
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A feminist eco-horror set in the near-future American West, Desert Creatures combines the subversive inventiveness of Inland by Téa Obreht with the eco-surrealism of Jeff Vandermeer's Dead Astronauts and the themes of survival and morality in Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Award-winning short fiction writer Kay Chronister transfigures genre and the myth of the West in this stylish and original debut novel.
November 8, 2022 / $26.95 / 352 pages
In a world that has become treacherous and desiccated, Magdala has always had to fight to survive. At nine years old, she and her father, Xavier, are exiled from their home, fleeing through the Sonoran Desert, 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 the 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 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 sick of waiting for her miracle. Recruiting an exiled Vegas priest named Elam at gunpoint to serve as her guide, Magdala turns her gaze to Vegas once more, and this time, nothing will stop her. The pair form a fragile alliance as they navigate the darkest and strangest reaches of the desert on a trip that takes her further from salvation even as she nears the holy city.
With ferocious imagination and poetic precision, Desert Creatures is a story of endurance at the expense of redemption. What compromise does survival require of a woman, and can she ever unlearn the instincts that have kept her alive?
Kay Chronister is a writer of dark and speculative fiction. Her fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Strange Horizons, The Dark and elsewhere, and has been nominated for a World Fantasy Award. Her Shirley Jackson award-nominated collection of short stories, Thin Places, was published by Undertow Publications in 2020. Her first novel, Desert Creatures, is forthcoming from Erewhon Books this year.
Praise for Desert Creatures
“Chronister pierces with her prose…. Desert Creatures is not a comfort read — it is rife with horror, betrayal, and a landscape that will burn itself on your consciousness. But in the end, this book will comfort you.” —Book Riot, Best Books of 2022
“Genre-shredding . . . Stunning . . . A story of both creation and apocalypse, where characters struggle with both belief and heresy.” —Tobias Carroll, Tor.com
“Existing at the sweet spot where A Canticle for Leibowitz and Blood Meridian meet, Chronister’s Desert Creatures is a vivid investigation of faith, perseverance, and human violence as they exist at the end of the world. A scintillating first novel.” —Brian Evenson, winner of the World Fantasy and Shirley Jackson Awards
“Kay Chronister has crafted an incredible setting, pushing the wild weirdness of the Sonoran Desert toward the furthest extremes of possibility. I will never forget this uncanny world, nor brave Magdala’s quest across it, contending with holy saints and hellish killers in a landscape whose every inch and inhabitant is as dangerous as they are in dire need of healing.” —Matt Bell, author of the New York Times Notable Book Appleseed
“If The Canterbury Tales was set in future Sonoran and Mojave deserts, it might look a little like this . . . [A] strange and frightening vision.” —Publishers Weekly
Excerpt
Late in the afternoon, they passed a man sitting perched on the head of a saguaro cactus.