Of Fathers and Fire

When Richie Thorpe and his ragtag religious band of ex-thieves arrive in the High Plains town of Suborney, Colorado, Tommy Sandor is captivated by the group. It’s the summer of 1980 in the dusty, junkyard town, and the seventeen-year-old is wrestling with the forces shaping America and himself: the Iran hostage crisis, the incoming tide of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, and the political rise of the Christian Right.

As Tommy is increasingly drawn to the group, his mother, Connie, grows frantic. She has been lying to her son, telling him that his father was a saxophonist from New York who never knew he had a child, and is laying low in Suborney to hide from Tommy’s actual father—Richie Thorpe. Connie knows Richie has come for his son, and though she has witnessed Thorpe’s mysterious powers, the desperation to protect her lie, her son, and their life begets a venom with an elemental power that threatens the whole town.

Steven Wingate is the author of the award-winning short story collection Wifeshopping and the prose poem collection Thirty-One Octets: Incantations and Meditations. His interactive digital memoir daddylabyrinth premiered at the Art/Science Museum of Singapore. He is an associate professor of English at South Dakota State University.