Dennis E. Staples's PASSING THROUGH A PRAIRIE COUNTRY
Schedule
Thu, 03 Apr, 2025 at 07:00 pm
UTC-05:00Location
314 Division St S, Northfield, MN, United States, Minnesota 55057 | Northfield, MN
Content welcomes Dennis E. Staples for a reading from his new novel, PASSING THROUGH A PRAIRIE COUNTRY. Join us on Thursday, April 3rd at 7 pm, when Dennis will be in conversation with fellow horror writer and friend of Content, Benjamin Percy.A darkly humorous thriller about the ghosts that haunt the temples of excess we call casinos, and the people caught in their high-stakes, low-odds web
For decades, a dark force has terrorized the Languille Lake reservation. Only spoken of in whispers as “the sandman,” he lurks in the Hidden Atlantis Lake Resort and Casino, the reservation’s main attraction and source of revenue, leeching its patrons’ dreams and ambitions and also preventing the ghosts that linger there from moving on. Fleeing a breakup, Marion Lafournier, a mid-twenties Ojibwe, seeks solace in the slot machine’s siren song. Here he falls afoul of the sandman, an encounter Marion barely escapes through the timely intervention of his cousins Alana and Cherie, who both work at the casino and are intimately aware of the sandman’s power. Meanwhile, Glenn Nielan, only recently out of the closet and an aspiring documentarian, hopes to capture the faces of the Ojibwe land while experiencing the casino’s thrills. But he will learn that all who choose to play the sandman’s games are in danger of falling into his grasp.
Marion and Alana are members of the Bullhead clan, a family with ties to a sacred past and a fierce determination to ensure their future. Alana, with her seven-fire sight, is the only person to fully grasp the danger the sandman poses. Aware of Marion’s occasional ability to navigate the spirit world, she enlists his aid in defeating this wraith. But the power and reach of the sandman go far beyond Alana’s worst fears. Soon she and Marion find themselves in a battle for their lives and for the souls of the reservation’s residents, both the living and the dead.
DENNIS E. STAPLES is an Ojibwe writer from Bemidji, Minnesota, and the author of THIS TOWN SLEEPS. He holds an MFA in fiction from the Institute of American Indian Arts and is a graduate of the 2018 Clarion West Writers Workshop and a recipient of the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship. His work has appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction and Nightmare magazine. He is a member of the Red Lake Nation.
BENJAMIN PERCY has won a Whiting Award, a Plimpton Prize, two Pushcart Prizes, an NEA fellowship, and the iHeartRadio Award for Best Scripted Podcast. He is the author of the novels THE NINTH METAL, THE UNFAMILIAR GARDEN, THE DARK NET, THE DEAD LANDS, RED MOON, and THE WILDING; three story collections; and an essay collection, THRILL ME. He also writes Wolverine and X-Force for Marvel Comics. He lives in Minnesota with his family.
Where is it happening?
314 Division St S, Northfield, MN, United States, Minnesota 55057
