This was last week’s piece of weird fiction being discussed over at LibraryThing.

Review: “The Dark”, Karen Joy Fowler, 1991.

Despite one of my interests, the bubonic plague, playing a significant role in this story, I don’t think it quite manages to meld its plot elements together successfully.

Our narrator is an epidemiologist, and the story will take us from 1954 and California to 1967 and Vietnam and back to California.

In the summer of 1954, in Yosemite Park, the Becker family disappears while camping.

In the spring of 1960, two campers will have their food and beer stolen.

In August 1962, Caroline Crosby, a teenage girl, and her family go on a camping trip. Surly and not happy with the trip, things get worse for Caroline when she’s hospitalized for septicemic plague, the form the plague takes when the infection enters the bloodstream. Continue reading →