'Peopled by singular characters and suffused with a keen sense of time and place, Pufahl's debut casts a fascinating spell. Fiction to linger over.' - Kirkus Reviews (starred review) In these moments, it feels like Pufahl could not possibly have said what she needed to say with any other words. 'The book is filled with such rhythmically lovely, splendidly evocative, and masterfully precise descriptions. Unfortunately what has the potential to be a quietly potent and contemplative read becomes muted with an overly languid pace that meanders and never quite drives home the novel's themes.' - Rachel Hullett Both characters are unhappy and haunted by their discontent, and the novel explores the bond between them even as they're physically separated from one another. 'Set in the postwar U.S., On Swift Horses alternates chapters between Muriel, a young newlywed who has recently relocated from Kansas to San Diego and become fascinated by the city's racetrack, and her wayward brother-in-law Julius, a young gay man working in a casino in Las Vegas. 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.

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.

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. And so she begins slipping off to the Del Mar racetrack to bet and eavesdrop, learning the language of horses and risk. 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 nineteenth birthday, and her sly, itinerant brother-in-law, Julius, who made the world feel bigger than she had imagined. Muriel is newly married and restless, transplanted from her rural Kansas hometown to life in a dusty bungalow in San Diego. A lonely newlywed and her wayward brother-in-law follow divergent and dangerous paths through the postwar American West.

Shannon pufahl on swift horses