The harsh landscapes of Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado mold harsher people. From the Sonoran Desert to the Front Range, resource scarcity is a mindset passed down from one generation to the next, and drought is a shared inheritance. In these sixteen stories, Sanders reveals the commonplace violence of the Southwest, and the tenuous relationship people have with the landscape and each other: a young woman fantasizes about trout, another about mass murder; children and young adults search for mythical creatures in place of fathers; biblical rains reveal people’s secrets; deer taunt uranium miners; and men cosplay as cowboys attempting to manifest a nonexistent destiny. Flood Covenant was shortlisted for the Walter Cummins Award, longlisted for the C&R Press Fiction Award, a finalist for the EastOver Prize, a semifinalist for the Electric Book Award, and multiple stories received Pushcart nominations.

Author: Mackenzie Sanders
Paperback: 146 pages, 2026
Literature | Short Fiction
ISBN-13: 9781972482223

“Sanders has a keen sense of place due to her unflinching attention to the wavering hearts and dark habits of people. People make the place, and the people who populate and shape the Arizona of her stories are true bleak examples–both heartbreaking and comic–of the human condition.”  —David McLendon, editor, Unsaid

“Once in a generation a writer comes forth who speaks for the time and moment we are in. Mackenzie Sanders is one such a writer. Flood Covenant is a book we have been waiting to read. Each of these carefully crafted stories brings resonance to folks living in the border states. Sanders’ precise and impeccable gift brings into sharp relief a diverse group of narrators from the indigenous, heartbroken, grief stricken, lost and the damned. In Flood Covenant, the voices and worlds of children are given a central primacy. The reader will want to return to Flood Covenant again, and again.” —Jacqueline Johnson, author of A Woman’s Season