The Darling of Blackrock Desert: Three Novellas of the West: Three Novellas Set in the West

From the critically acclaimed short fiction writer Laura Newman, whose first collection of stories, PW effused “with candor and wry wit, and memorable details, these stories shimmer,” comes three, quirky yet resonant novellas that together form an unusual and original view of western American life.  In The Darling of the Black Rock Desert, Julia loves Howi, but never intends to marry him until she realizes she’s pregnant with few options; it is, after all, 1960.  Life becomes more complicated and yet richer when their darling daughter, Nia, is born with a physical disability. Despite her infirmity, Nia manages to have a fairly normal, happy childhood, beloved by her best friend Wynona and their male sidekicks until tragedy strikes and family life comes undone.

It’s 1986 in City of Angels, and Lenny Henri and Simone Bouchard meet in the iconic Los Angeles Central Library. Simone is a college art student working on watercolor portraits with a punk edge, and Lenny, at the well-worn edge of his 30’s, is a Viet Nam vet trying to survive extreme PTSD. They strike up an unlikely acquaintance: Simone tries to help Lenny find a life beyond the library’s protective and fantasy-inducing stacks, while Lenny helps Simone to embrace and understand a painful event in her past.  But then the great Los Angeles Library fire of 1986 happens, a substantial portion of the book stacks going up in flames, and the two lose track of one another and have to search in order to find their way back to their cherished friendship. 

In The Saints of Death Valley, Paula and George allow their kids to put their faith in the whirling-dervish borax dust bowls of Furnace Creek, the drumbeats of the Timbisha Shoshone. And yet their middle daughter, Remi, feels lost in the theological mishmash and in need of structure. Enter Francine and her daughter, Grace, who are the opposite: for them religion is a commandment. Committing what she fears is an unforgivable sin, wondering if she can find atonement elsewhere, Grace takes her velvet bag of holy cards and hits the road, winding up in Death Valley where she meets Remi and the two of them together approach theology in their own terms. But then comes a hot night of chaos and destruction, and both women realize they’re going to need all the faith they can muster. Newman’s trio of novellas are by turns probing, incandescent, and like her shorter fiction, riotously funny and are certain to broader her readership.