The Sub

Thomas M. Disch

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At the very moment substitute teacher Diana Turney recovers memories of sexual abuse at the hands of her father, she finds herself wielding a potent brand of witchcraft: the Circe-like ability to turn people into their totemic animals. But once she unleashes these exhilarating metamorphoses on the citizens of the small hamlet of Leech Lake, she learns that she has not been given these powers so much as she has been given to them; that others, including her enemies, have similar gifts; that she has become the conduit of her ghastly father's evil energies, long dormant but now sprung to life; and that despite her unearthly gifts, escape this time might prove impossible. A work of fiendishly pleasurable plotting and prose, The Sub weaves a myriad number of strands--including New Age, Native American, and fundamentalist thinking--into a tapestry that is ethically devious, blackly comic, and increasingly horrifying.