We may receive an affiliate commission from anything you buy from this article.Karen Russell, the bestselling author of "Swamplandia!" and "Vampires in the Lemon Grove," returns with a magical new novel, "The Antidote" (available March 11 from Knopf), a Nebraska Dust Bowl-era tale of a prairie witch, who stores the memories that townsfolk don't want to carry.And with farms going bankrupt and a string of murders terrifying the town, there are lots of things these people don't want to remember.Read an excerpt below. "The Antidote" by Karen Russell $27 at Amazon Prefer to listen? Audible has a 30-day free trial available right now.
Try Audible for free PrologueDeposit 69818060-1-77Harp Oletsky's First MemoryIt is nowhere you chose to be, and yet here you are.Papa steers your shoulders into the heart of the jack drive.
Hundreds of rabbits stare at you through the wire around the fence posts.It feels like looking into the mirror.
They do not want to be in this story either.Men have been working since dawn to herd the wild jacks into this pen.
The town has gathered to solve the problem of the rabbits, who chew through rangeland and cropland, who eat the golden wheat your papa turns into money.Worse than the locusts, says Papa.
Every hide brings a penny bounty.So many turnipy sweating bodies and a festive feeling in the air like a penny rubbed between two fingers, like blood shocked into a socket.
A smell that reminds you of the room where babies are born.When you try to turn and run away, Papa grabs you.
There's Mr.O'Malley, Mr.
Waldowko, Mr.Zalewski, Mrs.
Haage.You can't remember any more names.
A hundred jointed arms come swinging into the pen that is alive with jackrabbits, the place of no escape.Now there is only madness.
Terror of cudgels, terror of ax handles and hammers, terror of being trampled."Papa! Help! Stop!" Rabbits run over your feet.
"Settle down, Harp— " Papa is ang...