A Green Glow on the Horizon: Tales from the National Association of Tourist Attraction Survivors
in which Xavier Buttons breathes underwater for twenty minutes,
Ezekiel stuffs squirrels for the Living Bible Museum,
Ruth wishes she hadn’t lost her wishbone collection,
Rita rides to the top of Sombrero Tower,
Arabella devours herself in the Sonoran Desert,
Dawn sleeps in the Belle Gunness exhibit’s garden cart,
Becky dismembers her mom’s Cherished Twinklings figurine,
Layla loses herself in the Winchester Mystery House,
Bud Blackenberry steeps himself in a bath of peppermint tea,
Abigail becomes an otter,
Lauren embraces Jelly,
Valerie follows a green glow on the horizon,
and Hanna Susanna finds a home in Hell
Forthcoming from Cornerstone Press, March 2026
University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point
“Dawn Burns’s dream of America is a circus sideshow of small-town roadside attractions, and behind the scenes at these iconic museums and glorified gift shops, we find families profoundly devoted to whatever is on display. As Burns ostensibly explores tourist destinations, she is actually exposing the wider problem of spiritual abuse, engendered by blind faith and the plain old-fashioned refusal to see beyond one’s own walls. Her tender and funny insights into the relationships between people and their beliefs reveal the way American religiosity so easily morphs into consumerism, cultural misappropriation, and absurdity. While some characters in these fabulist tales succumb to their worst impulses, the author never gives up on them, but instead, through masterful narrative, carries us all into the imaginative realm with humor and compassion that honors community and human complexity.”
— Bonnie Jo Campbell, National Book Award finalist and author of The Waters
Tourist Attraction Trauma
It’s a little known affliction but one that the National Association of Tourist Attraction Survivors (NATAS) is striving to bring to the forefront of American consciousness.
Unlike tourists on summer road trips laughing off and leaving behind sombrero towers, jackalopes, and wax statues of the biblical Job, tourist attraction survivors cannot simply walk away.
“It’s hell living in a tourist attraction!”
So says Rita Epiphyte, a young woman born beneath Pedro’s sombrero at South of the Border in Dillon, South Carolina. Rita is not alone but instead wanders troubled with fellow survivors through these fabulist tales.
This book is filled with mind-bending tales compiled by the fictitious National Association of Tourist Attraction Survivors (NATAS) centrally located in Florida, Ohio, a town where tourists never go.
You will be shocked by Dawn Tempers’ harrowing tale of being raised by serial killer Belle Gunness’s ghost at Indiana’s LaPorte County Historical Museum!
You will be saddened for Ezekiel William White, unwillingly rescued from a life of squirrel taxidermy for the glory of God at Mansfield, Ohio’s, Living Bible Museum!
You will try to turn away from Arizona’s Thing, but will be unable to. Even a creature preserved under glass can stir a devouring madness.
Compelling case studies
Bud Blackenberry, “Under the Sign of Sleepytime” (Celestial Seasonings, Boulder, Colorado): “I have always imagined that when my mother’s water broke, it was not some bland amniotic fluid that went spilling over her kitchen’s tiled floor, but peppermint tea. Gallons and gallons of steaming hot peppermint tea.”
Valerie (last name unknown), “The Roswell Diaries” (International UFO Museum and Research Center, Roswell, New Mexico): “We’re moving. Again. Mom tells me, ‘It’s for the best,’ but that’s what she said when we ended up in Tacoma a year ago. This time Mom says she wants an alien baby and the only way to get one is if she moves us all to Roswell.”
Ruth Michelle Mitchell, “Raised in a Corn Palace” (The World’s Only Corn Palace, Mitchell, South Dakota): “As I pack up my life, I wish I hadn’t lost my wishbone collection. I’ve had my collection since I was a girl no older than six, and have added to it every wishbone I’ve ever since had the pleasure to break.”
Hanna Susanna (aka “unwed mother”), “Go to Hell” (Hell, Michigan): “I knew my strong will made me an outsider. But buying Sammy ice cream from Hell’s Creamatory when Dad, who could no longer even call me by my name and wasn’t even home to condemn me if I bought that ice cream for my illegitimate daughter, was worth being burned in the fires of even a literal hell.”
Roadtripping in Michigan, I went to Hell, a lighthearted tourist attraction where everybody’s welcome!
Such a pleasure to spend a day with Hell’s “mayor” Odum Plenty (John Colone) and Reverend Vonn Williams who officiates weddings at Hell’s Chapel of Love!
A road trip across America
Initially funded by a Faculty Development Grant from Albion College and furthered with funds from the Ohio Arts Council and Michigan State University, I roadtripped with my questions and curiosities, winding from one tourist attraction to the next as I researched and wrote my genre-bending thematic novel.
I’d expected to play while researching and writing, and I did. I leaned into my fabulist tendencies, created fictional characters that live in real tourist attractions, blurred lines I wanted to blur, and more.
Yet from the start, a tragic element was also at work in these tales of connection and disconnection, and of the NATAS organization founded to help survivors heal from their traumas and live to tell their stories.
Like threads in the sweaters of the taxidermied mice at Mackinaw City’s Wacky Taxidermy and Miniatures Museum, you will find play and tragedy woven together, impossible to separate.
“We are always pretending we are always real.”
from “Epilogue”
Accolades
- CMICH Press Summit Series named A Green Glow on the Horizon (formerly titled Born Beneath Pedro’s Sombrero, Raised in a Corn Palace) a finalist in the 2024 CMICH Press Summit Series competition.
They noted the book for being “fresh and interesting” and for bringing a “quirky new perspective . . . to literature.”
- Michigan State University’s Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and Cultures granted me professional development funds for travel and research in Michigan.
- The Ohio Arts Council awarded me an Individual Excellence Award in Fiction on the basis of the chapter “Born Beneath Pedro’s Sombrero.”
- The Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature awarded “Raised in a Corn Palace” the Paul Somers Prize for Creative Prose which it published in MidAmerica.
- Albion College awarded me a Faculty Development Grant for travel and research.
“This is the story I’m learning to tell.”
from “The Storytelling Creed of the National Association of Tourist Attraction Survivors”
WHAT READERS ARE SAYING ABOUT
A GREEN GLOW ON THE HORIZON
“In turns wryly funny and heart-twisting, these compelling vignettes revel in their raw oddities. While each tale brings home its own unique souvenir, the common denominator among all the stories is an aim at understanding our deepest, truest selves. As Burns writes, ‘In the end we are all characters in each other’s stories, aren’t we?’”
Colleen Alles
author of Close to a Flame: Stories
Dawn Burns 