“After hundreds of miles through the spiky short-grass prairie—a dry and windblown Poaceae desert tunneled by black-tailed prairie dogs (Cynomys ludovicianus), big-eyed and breathlessly barking at the end of their mating season—the conductor and the whistle’s scream signaled my stop.

I’d taken the tonic each night. It had tasted of cherries and made my skin sensitive. My clothing touching me left a pleasant tickle that threatened to break into waves of some sort. My breasts were gone, but was it enough?”

In Natural Attraction, Clementine wants to be a naturalist. She travels out West to search for new plants and animals to study.

Prairie dogs are social animals and live in underground “townships.” They eat the same foods that cattle eat so farmers and ranchers consider them pests. Their population today is only 2% of that in Clementine’s day.