The novellas and stories in American Originals convey the power of the West Texas desert to swallow people—literally, or through the rituals of labor, or through the raptures of ecstatic vision, induced by blessings or madness—and people’s ability to forgeconnections in spite of extreme conditions. Each piece in thisthematically-linked collection assumes a unique shape, whetherpoetically compressed, echoing (only to break) the contours ofmystery stories, or redolent of the forms of classical prayer. TheTexas of American Originals becomes the landscape of strife andhope, struggle and love, lost and found. The characters in the stories and novellas here learn, sometimesthe hard way, the truth of T. S. Eliot’s insight that the “end of allour exploring” in life is to “arrive where we started” and to know,for the first time, who we really are. Saints and sinners, and theblurred lines between them, drive these spare narratives set in theplains and deserts of Texas.