DESERT FLOWER

High-stakes greed in the Badlands of South Dakota causes unremitting violence by the protagonists Desert Flower, a 17-year-old girl, and Greenleaf, a pool-playing Indian.

Sexton is a well-known surrealist artist and poet, 2007 winner of an Eric Hoffer Award for the short story, “Holy Night.” In this novella he uses surreal, often poetic natural imagery and the narrative technique of shifting perspective from interior monologue to gritty dialogue. Desert Flower, a complicated, asocial Lolita-type, steals the cocaine and payoff of a drug deal. In the process, she shoots her confederate, Greenleaf, and leaves him as scapegoat. A hullabaloo erupts later when she rescues him from a hospital bed and the pair vanish. As unlikely as this coupling sounds, the two share a thirst for revenge against a society that has grievously wronged them. Prejudice in place, everyone assumes that the killer Indian kidnapped the innocent white girl. National Guard and FBI join state police to search the hills as Desert Flower becomes a media darling in absentia. In a stunning surprise move, meanwhile, Greenleaf literally turns on the lawmen pursuing him and guns them down, an Uzi in each hand. He continues his rampage with an amazing supply of weapons that he finds in an abandoned car. A second surprise turning point occurs when the reunited protagonists hide in a cave during a sudden blizzard, more dead than alive. A final, inexplicable twist concludes a storyline so skillfully devious it could have been written by Heinrich von Kleist two centuries ago in Germany.

Despite problems with suspension of disbelief, this story is a thrill seeker’s dream.