Karen Russell Is Resisting Despair

Picture this: at The Night Falls, a roadside tourist attraction built around a mysterious grotto in the Florida wilderness, a trio of Sirens lure tourists to the water’s edge with their “dangerously beautiful music.” All across America, their song spreads through dreams and nightmares like a “sonic contagion,” drawing sufferers from all walks of life to the grotto, “home of the world’s eeriest echoes.” Here, in this strange and sublime place, these lonesome strangers find a nourishing community in one another—an antidote to the Sirens’ seductive song of despair.