First published 2025
The Prairie Witch feels the weight of every memory stored in her flesh as Black Sunday's dust storm tears through Uz, Nebraska. This fictional town crumbles under multiple pressures: the Great Depression, Dust Bowl drought, and its own buried violence. The witch guards the secrets people have entrusted to her body like a living vault. Meanwhile, a Polish wheat farmer discovers his hoarded blessing transforms into something darker. His orphan niece, a basketball star learning witchcraft, runs from her overwhelming grief. A talking scarecrow watches everything unfold. A New Deal photographer arrives with a camera that captures more than the present moment, threatening to expose both the town's hidden past and its approaching fate. Russell weaves these lives together as Uz faces its reckoning with forgotten histories and climate disaster.
Genres: literary-fiction, american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, magical-realism, dark-fantasy
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, haunting, lyrical, melancholic, thought-provoking
Tropes: ensemble-cast, found-family, generational-trauma, magical-realism
Setting: Uz, Nebraska, Nebraska, Great Plains
Period: Great Depression, 1930s, Black Sunday
432 pages · Paperback · Vintage
Content warnings: death, violence