Heartland

In a word-drunk romp through an alternate, pre-apocalyptic United States, Ana Simo's fiction debut, Heartland, is the uproarious story of a thwarted writer's elaborate revenge on the woman who stole her lover, blending elements of telenovela, pulp noir, and dystopian satire. There's only one solution for a nasty case of writer's block, and that's murder. Specifically, that of one Mercy McCabe, a cunning SoHo art dealer who was once our Latina narrator's rival for the scrumptious Bebe. When she discovers that McCabe has squandered Bebe's affections after stealing her away, revenge is not enough: she must admit her guilt, sentence herself, and beg for her own execution, Soviet-style. In the all-too-terrifyingly-familiar America of Heartland, the inconceivable has become ordinary: corruption and greed at the top have led to mass starvation in the heartland; hordes of refugees have escaped from resettlement camps and attack the cities; a puritanical...