Another Burning Kingdom (Flyover Fiction)

Lem Purchase is in California when a call comes in the dead of night: his younger, disturbed brother in Nebraska announces his plans to carry out an act of terrorism targeting the state capitol building in Lincoln. This isnt the first time Lem has had to make a frantic check on Jackson. Nor is it the first time that author Robert Vivian has taken us to the haunted world of the Great Plains. Critics called Vivians first two books in the Tall Grass Trilogy “lyrical and harrowing” (Sven Birkerts on The Mover of Bones) and “brilliantly written” (Publishers Weekly on Lamb Bright Saviors). In this third and final volume in the trilogy, Vivian weaves the voices of Lem, Jackson, and Lems estranged wife, Lissa, into an American triptych of longing, remembrance, and innocence—of hopes almost fulfilled and inevitably disappointed—as we race to Jacksons reckoning with history that must have its day.

While Jackson hatches yet another plan that rivals the first in madness and ultimately threatens Lems life, Lems reflections reveal what, and how much, that life has meant. In Jacksons determination we encounter another view of what matters, as he clings to his apocalyptic notion of the only way in which the country can be reclaimed from its present madness.

Robert Vivian is a professor of English and creative writing at Alma College in Michigan. He is the author of The Mover of Bones and Lamb Bright Saviors in the Tall Grass Trilogy, as well as the award-winning Cold Snap as Yearning, all available from the University of Nebraska Press.