Dinosaur Café: A Semblance of Monstrous Prairie Creatures

hese five stories will leave the reader stunned by unforgettable characters, who are, by turns, superstitious, stubborn, comic, and, even, grotesque. The setting of these stories: a Macondo-like small town, where miracles, and would-be miracles, can and do happen in a backwater of history, which is actually the battle zone of the human heart, in conflict with itself. From the title piece, in which a shadowy artist, on the ceiling of a small town cafe, creates murals of a startling and paradoxical richness; to the plaintive monologue of an elderly farm-woman, standing in the way of the plow that threatens the graves of babies she has sworn to protect; to the marvelous powers of an overworked faith-healer: these stories---shaped from the lore, superstitions, and history of the Dakota Germans---reveal the intense inner world of an unknown ethnic group, working out its destiny on the immensities of the American prairie.