A small American town holds a lottery every year, and when you find out what the winner receives, you will never forget it. Jackson published this in The New Yorker, and it generated more mail than any story in the magazine's history, most of it outraged, much of it missing the point entirely. The prose is plain, the setting ordinary, the horror delayed until it cannot be escaped. Jackson refused to explain. The story is about tradition, about violence, about the things we do because we have always done them. The black box is worn. The stones are gathered. It is simply what is done.