What do children know that adults can't begin to believe? The answer is hidden in plain sight in this haunting short story by the bestselling author of Her Body and Other Parties.
Tiger, tiger, burning bright, in the forests of the night. In the town of Never-Again, Pennsylvania, this hand-game song contains a history-centuries of inexplicable tiger sightings. A researcher arrives to write yet another academic paper about the well-studied town, called "Big Cats in the Children's Hand-Games of Never-Again, Pennsylvania." Nobody expects to find new clues-but, years after a scene of unimaginable violence, the truth about this childish chant is about to come out.
Carmen Maria Machado's Bloody Summer is part of Trespass, a collection of wild stories about animal instincts, human folly, and survival from award-winning, bestselling authors. Read or listen to each in a single sitting.
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Never-Again is a small rural community in Lackwanna County in north-eastern Pennsylvania, approximately twenty miles from Scranton.
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(Amazon Original Stories, 24 February 2022, 28 pages, borrowed from @AmazonKindle, #PrimeReading)
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This is a new author for me. I'd no idea what to expect from Bloody Summer apart from it touches on similar themes to the other stories in Trespass. The story is structured almost like an academic or research paper on the strange history of a town-called Never-Again plagued by sightings of Tiger's for centuries and a tragic day where many people were slaughtered and fifty children vanished. I thought this was an intense read and I enjoyed it a lot. I'd recommend this.