In Awe

In Awe, Scoff Heim's second novel, follows the lives of three outcasts who, during the course of one rain-soaked autumn, find themselves the target of an onslaught of terror and violence. Sarah, thirty-two, is a clerk in a convenience store with a string of part-time boyfriends; Harriet is a frail, birdlike woman of sixty-two whose son, Marshall - Sarah's best friend - has recently died; and Boris is a seventeen-year-old orphan who lives in the local detention center and dreams of writing the ultimate zombie novel. This unlikely trio is united by their love for one another, their freakishness in relation to their conservative Kansas backwater, and their rich fantasy lives. Harriet immerses herself in the serenity of her farm as she grapples with the reality of her son's death, while Sarah dreams of being a heroine in the B horror films she loves. And Boris dreams of Rex, the beautiful but savage redneck who is the center of a lethal pack of teenage boys. But these fantasy lives increasingly blur into the real, potentially dangerous world around them. Sarah's car is defaced with graffiti; two local coeds turn up raped and murdered near the river; someone is prowling in the bushes outside Harriet's and Sarah's houses; Boris is beaten and humiliated at school. How these three friends respond to the terror both within and around them forms the core of Scott Heim's riveting story and leads the novel to its brutal and startling conclusion.