This book is a chapbook containing a single short story by a local author; I think I have one of his full length works here somewhere. I must have gotten this book in a package of books for a buck at the Friends of the Springfield-Greene County book sale.
At any rate, in this story, an author with writer’s block and a looming deadline agrees to take a quick vacation to a random spot on a map, and he ends up renting a car and driving with his wife into the Ozarks. They pull off the highway where a sign promises a restaurant and a place to stay, but the road turns to a dirt road. They pass an old gypsy woman and do not give her a ride, which leads to her placing a curse upon them. When they reach the ramshackle inn, they find it’s run by gypsies, and they’re kidnapped and taken to a hidden gypsy camp where they are locked in a ramshacklier shanty on the Night of the Wolf. And werewolves attack, and they survive. BECAUSE THEY’RE NOW CURSED WITH LYCANTHROPY.
It’s a pretty basic story, and not a very good one. But it hearkens back to a time of less cellular coverage and fewer smartphones. In a more deft storytelling, this might not have been quite so disparate, the distance between then and now, but reading it left a lot of brainpower for thinking about other things instead of the primary text.
Geez, Charles, I hope this isn’t your brother I’m pooh-poohing.
It’s not. I have relatives in Missouri, but they’re up in the 816 area.