Prairie gothic

de J. M. Hayes

Benteen County, Kansas, a hellhole in summer under scorching heat and winds, turns even meaner in winter. As a howling blizzard blows down upon Buffalo Springs, the sparsely populated county seat, Sheriff English is presented with a missing doll and a dead baby's switched, but by whom? And why? The elderly coroner disclaims any knowledge, but seems faintly uneasy, especially when the swastika on the tiny corpse is revealed. Meanwhile the sheriff's half-brother, Harvey Edward Maddox, also part Cheyenne and thus known as Mad Dog for his invocation of his Amerind heritage, has picked up a naked dead body from the Sunshine Towers retirement home and is heading towards a treetop burial when diverted by the storm. In a makeshift mound nearby, Mad Dog's pet hybrid-wolf finds a child's skull and evidence of mature bones. Also a fading ID for a living County Supervisor. Can the Hornbaker clan really be as gothic as it seems? And what of the tiny woman in the red shoes back at the Towers who calls herself Dorothy, underlying an odd note of Oz ...