Genre: Science Fiction
Type of Short Story: Novelette
Summary: What happens when a family man comes back from the dead to find his mistress married to someone else?
Death is never final in Greenville, a frontier community on a faraway planet. Every year the townspeople vote on who will be Reclaimed, granting them a new life following an untimely, fatal accident. Often the elections are divisive, pitting neighbor against neighbor, or even family members against one another.
But when Ned Polanski comes back from the dead to a gloating wife and tense rejection from his young love, the brutal emotional aftershocks threaten the town's very survival.
Excerpt:
There were many who still wondered how Ned Polanski had been elected a week before. Having already lost his bid to be Reclaimed twice, many saw Ned as a perennial loser. Two years ago he'd lost out to a strapping, popular farm youth kicked in the head by an ornery mule just a few weeks before the ballots were cast. And last year, Greenville had chosen to Reclaim the daughter of Lance Guspie, the prestigious town banker, who had perished giving birth to a healthy son. The young woman had a strong case to begin with, but many were also influenced by the idea of old Mr. Guspie taking out his revenge on the accounts of those who voted against him. Ostensibly the voting results were secret, but you never knew.
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