Prairie Wetlands
August Mirkin's great grandfather was a full blooded Elf. He knew nothing of this until he was forty seven and it happened to come up in a family conversation. Mixed species marriage was still a shocking shame to the conservative prairie people. Some of the other kids in grade school bragged about being one third or so Elf because it was cool to the kids to be part "Savage magic wielding blood lined. Young August Mourned that he wasn't part Elf too. Turns out he was but it was hushed and his parents lied when he asked them about it. Elves are damned for being a different species. Only Humans go to heaven.
The Dawn of the Drought
It had not rained for seven months, now it was deep into a scorching hot dry mean summer. August Mirkin was nineteen when the dust bowl began...The superstitious farmers thought it a curse of the Elves who had been slaughtered to clear this land for crop growth.
Masked roped racist members of the shalters sect marching openly in the streets with guns. Proclaiming this is God's country and it shall be reclaimed with Gods sword.
dust bowl and witch hunt cursed midwest from the elf purge
protag is part elf but don't know early on cause its a dirty family secret. Protag born too late some fifteen or years years after a great Elvin culture influenced uprising of youth. A grasp at utopia that ended with a severed hand.
burned out area of blackened shacks reduced to skeletons, a once hippie commune the town rose up and burned killed and drove out. Raping hippy chicks "Whats she screaming about these commies are supposed to be into free love"
floods over populations of snakes grasshoppers rabbits then a great and horridible droughto. Protag born too late missing a shamanic uprising some ten years earlier, a revolution now dust.
Pagan Kansas-magic and danger
childhood in a wetlands of life abundant. So much life and visiting cousins killing the fuck out of as many animals as they can "that's what there for" special shotguns to blast over a hundred birds out of the sky with just one shot let em fall and rot young protag collects beaks to make a wind chime. . Pond bombs to kill all the fish in one massive explosion big fun jock raids on other schools
"Branding". A way of shaming mentally scaring other kids into submissive loser roles. Jock's parents teach the kids this early so they can break the other kids wills.
The couch has the right to kill bad kids, as long as they are of the lower social class. He is a waste not sort of guy and he takes them to a shelter belt and rapes them before making them die. He sometimes can't resist killing a girl because they turn him on. The jocks and others learn about the location and sometimes they hide and watch the fun. A girl protag has a crush on gets killed this way.
wind storms. A eerie screaming howling moaning wind like angry spirits. The winds make a thin scribble of lines across the dirt that sometimes form words or sigals these are called "Devil scripts". Adults quickly brush them away with shoes
Inspirations, grapes of wrath, the empire of the summer moon and the worst hard time.