By JoeAnn Hart. Green Writers Press, 2024.

In the novel ARROYO CIRCLE, hoarding and homelessness are depicted through the dark marriage of environmental degradation and rampant capitalism. The story explores our collective role in the climate crisis through the lives of Shelley, a white, middle-aged handmaiden of a hoarder, and Les, an alcoholic, shape-shifting scientist, who lives in the creek bed behind Shelley’s house in Boulder, Colorado. As wildfires in the mountains fill the town with smoke, Shelley is confronted by gun-wielding police who believe she put a baby in the trunk of her car. When the warm Chinook winds blows through the mountains and melts the heavy snows, everyone, including the police, has one last shot at redemption.

JoeAnn Hart is the author of Arroyo Circle, a novel of reclamation in a time of loss, forthcoming from Green Writers Press in October 2024. Other books include the prize-winning environmental fiction collection Highwire Act & Other Tales of Survival, (September, 2023) the crime memoir Stamford ’76: A True Story of Murder, Corruption, Race, and Feminism in the 1970s, as well as Float, a dark comedy about plastics, and Addled, a social satire. Her short fiction and essays have been widely published, appearing in Slate.com, Orion, The Hopper, Prairie Schooner, The Sonora Review, Terrain.org, and many others. Her work explores the relationship between humans, their environments, and the more-than-human world.