Tony's Review of The Holey Land

The Holey Land follows Molly, a middle-aged woman who decides to take a vacation away from her ordinary life in Chicago. She ends up in Holy Land, a small desert town in New Mexico where the past and present seem to exist alongside one another. What begins as a simple trip soon becomes something much stranger.

Koerber does a good job of making the town itself part of the story. The desert, abandoned mining operations, and the people who have lived there all have histories that matter. I like how the supernatural elements are worked into an otherwise ordinary setting. Rather than creating a separate fantasy world, Koerber brings the unusual into ours and treats it as something that has always been there. Which is very good as the location is very important to the story. It is a special place.

The Holey Land in is an eclectic mixture of history, mythology, and ordinary human dissatisfaction. Molly comes looking for something different without really knowing what she wants. What she finds forces her to look at her life and the world around her differently. It’s not what you may expect, but that is life.