Lena and Anna are best friends. Two young teenage girls who have grown up in the backwoods town of Tangent Springs; isolated from the modern world by old men and old ways. The girls spend their spare moments daydreaming of running away and meeting real men who will take them away from their nightmare world and treat them with love and respect as equals. Their daydreaming is the only escape from the intergenerational abuse that manifests in their hometown; like a genetic disorder being passed down from one generation to the next, as a deformity brought about by the mutating effects of inbreeding.

Escape is their dream but to do so may mean giving up their lives completely. For one the cost is her life. For the others; it appears that the price may be even greater.

Filled with human monsters that are created and nurtured from warped belief systems built on lies, secrets and control, a turbulent chain of events that the three-young main character’s must endure for there to be any survivors. The ones that walk away may survive; but at what cost. A twisted look at the extremes of patriarchal families and cultures that is of course fictitious; or is it? That is The Lesser Evil.

Elizabeth L McDonald