Black Ambrosia
A teenage drifter crossing the emptied Midwest, narrating what she needs and how she takes it.
Engstrom’s 1988 novel follows Angelina, a teenage drifter hitchhiking across a hollowed-out American Midwest, discovering what she needs and taking it. The horror is in the ordinariness of the setting: emptied industrial towns, unsolved crimes, people isolated enough that nobody notices. Told largely in her own voice, which is the most disturbing choice in it, and long out of print before its recent revival.
Recommended by 1 Person
Grady Hendrix
But there was a darker side of America, of the Rust Belt, where the Midwest and these industrial towns were getting hollowed out. And all over the Midwest, there were unsolved crimes – the Ohio Circleville letter writer, the BTK killer, Jeffrey Dahmer. There was a dark, lonely side of America where people were becoming more and more isolated from each other, and there were people preying on them.
Interview · April 2025
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