Milliva, the doubting priestess

Days of Sagebrush and Absence is out now! (Get if from Amazon or from any of these other stores)

It is the story of environmental collapse, of doubt and comfort, and of a well-earned mistrust of those who wish to exploit the land.

My notes for this one before I started said, "San Manuel, Bueno, mártir but make it weird." But what does that mean? Well, that was a short novel written by Spanish writer Miguel de Unamuno, and at the time I read it in college it was one of those stories that just stayed with me. It tells of a priest who is seen by the people of his town as a living saint, narrated by one of the women in the parish. But through his friendship with the narrator's agnostic brother, we discover that the priest also has doubts. I won't say a lot more about it, but it's well worth reading (it's short and in the public domain).

Milliva is the doubting hermit and priestess up on the Moth Plateau. She showed up in the first novella, in a single chapter, and now has an entire story of her own. It is a story of tremendous change for the people here. The moths that define life on the Plateau collapse. The switchbacks are closed, cutting the people off from any communication below. Where possible, the people and cattle have been forced to evacuate. And a strange, possibly deadly vapor is rising up to envelop the high prairie.

In this catastrophe, Milliva takes on the role of her people's comfort and saint without releasing her own ideas and doubts.

This is the first of these novellas that I wouldn't recommend starting with. Not so much because it doesn't stand alone--it does--but because it clearly takes place after the others. Those three had a loose and uncertain timeline compared to each other, but this one is definitely at a later time, and that does play into how the story develops. It also plays a key role in setting up the events of the final novella.

But regardless of reading order, it's a powerful and fast paced story of how people respond to disaster.

Check it out!