On Swift Horses

A Novel

By: Shannon Pufahl

Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, MacLeod Andrews

A Lambda Literary Award Finalist, 2020

A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. Named a Most Anticipated Book of Fall by The New York Times, Real Simple, Electric Literature, and more.

"Cinematic.... The spaces she creates for her characters...have the aura of realms." (The New York Times Book Review)

A lonely newlywed and her wayward brother-in-law follow divergent and dangerous paths through the postwar American West.

Muriel is newly married and restless, transplanted from her rural Kansas hometown to life in a dusty bungalow in San Diego. The air is rich with the tang of salt and citrus, but the limits of her new life seem to be closing in: She misses her freethinking mother, dead before Muriel's 19th birthday, and her sly, itinerant brother-in-law, Julius, who made the world feel bigger than she had imagined. And so she begins slipping off to the Del Mar racetrack to bet and eavesdrop, learning the language of horses and risk. Meanwhile, Julius is testing his fate in Las Vegas, working at a local casino where tourists watch atomic tests from the roof, and falling in love with Henry, a young card cheat. When Henry is eventually discovered and run out of town, Julius takes off to search for him in the plazas and dives of Tijuana, trading one city of dangerous illusions and indiscretions for another.

On Swift Horses is a debut of astonishing power: a story of love and luck, of two people trying to find their place in a country that is coming apart even as it promises them everything.

©2019 Shannon Pufahl (P)2019 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"Odyssean.... Pufahl’s voice is strikingly solid, timeworn but not nostalgic, as she unravels a cinematic story that avoids genre clichés or sentimentality.... The spaces she creates for her characters - San Diego’s languid Chester Hotel hiding in plain sight, Tijuana rendered as an underworld - have the aura of realms." (The New York Times Book Review)

"Imagine a cross between Revolutionary Road and Battleborn (with a little bit of Brokeback Mountain thrown in) and you might end up with something akin to Pufahl’s debut, a rich and rugged suburban western about dreams deferred and living defiantly." (O, the Oprah Magazine)

"A dramatic story set in a dramatic period of national history.... There’s a boldness of diction and imagery, a stateliness of voice and rhythm, that resembles less the product of an MFA workshop than the cadences of the King James Bible.... Pufahl does what great stylists do: she snatches back experience from the general world, making it sing in all its particularity." (The Boston Globe)

Wanted to like it ...

Heard about this book on NPR and it sounded promising. However, I was disappointed. I wanted to care about the characters and enjoy clever turns of phrases but ultimately did not. I did not find this book interesting overall.

Endless pointless ramblings

Not sure what the point of the endless ramblings that the author goes on and that just never seems to make a point. It's like an endless setup piece, that has no resolution!

Not sure the point

I struggled to finish this book. It started out great, linking the Del Mar horse track with growing up in the 50’s… both of which I could relate to. It then went off on tangents that I really didn’t understand the point of- dissatisfied relationships, hidden sexual desires, secrets, etc.All the while, a “mustang” horse was left to run free and somehow wove the stories together but I never really did understand how or why. It was long, and tedious, but because the first few chapters were so good, I was determined to finish and hope it would all come together for me. Unfortunately, it never did.

Where's the story?

I never found the story in this. It rambles on and everyone becomes homosexual without any seeming motivation or circumstance. I didn't like the characters very much. Sort of no good grifters with gambling addictions.