Water, its use and abuse, trickles through Great American Desert, a story collection by Terese Svoboda that spans the misadventures of the prehistoric Clovis people to the wanderings of a forlorn couple around a pink pyramid in a sci-fi prairie. In "e;Dutch Joe,"e; the eponymous hero sees the future from the bottom of a well in the Sandhills, while a woman tries to drag her sister back from insanity in "e;Dirty Thirties."e; In "e;Bomb Jockey,"e; a local Romeo disposes of leaky bombs at South Dakota's army depot, while a family quarrels in "e;Ogallala Aquifer"e; as a thousand trucks dump chemical waste from a munitions depot next to their land. Bugs and drugs are devoured in "e;Alfalfa,"e; a disc jockey talks her way out of a knifing in "e;Sally Rides,"e; and an updated Pied Piper begs parents to reconsider in "e;The Mountain."e; The consequences of the land's mistreatment is epitomized in the final story by a discovery inside a pink pyramid. In her arresting and inimitable style, Svoboda's delicate handling of the complex dynamics of family and self seeps into every sentence of these first-rate short stories about what we do to the world around us-and what it can do to us.