Magic brewed from the merely commonplace distinguishes the stories in "The Delinquent Virgin." A plaster Virgin--conventionally set in a church Nativity scene--goes missing night after night with strange community consequences. The mysterious governess Miss Savage wreaks her weird and terrible revenge decades after she has been dismissed. Emmertt Wells narrates a story of sex and violence--with no sex and no violence.
Uniting many of these wayward pieces is the fictional desert town of St. Elmo, California, a place perhaps best described as "east of L.A. and west of the rest of the world." Here, using the alchemy of memory and imagination, Kalpakian creates fiction undaunted by the ordinary constrictions of time and place.
- ISBN10 1555972950
- ISBN13 9781555972950
- Publish Date 31 December 1999
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 23 June 2021
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Graywolf Press,U.S.
- Format Paperback
- Pages 200
- Language English