Cathryn Alpert's award-winning short stories appeared in numerous anthologies, including O. Henry Festival Stories, Best of the West 5, and Walking the Twilight: Women Writers of the Southwest, as well as in many literary magazines. She was a stage director and a teacher of theater, as well as a wife, and mother of two sons and three daughters. She died unexpectedly in 2010; Rocket City was her only published novel.
Set in the motels, highways and restaurants of New Mexico, Alpert's first novel is an elegant and witty, if modest, peek into the lives of a handful of characters in the American Southwest. Successfully sidestepping the cliches of the road novel, Alpert introduces her cast of fully dimensional characters with strong, selective strokes. At 26, Marilee Levitay (whose French-punning name is one of the author's few breaches of subtlety) is crossing the desert in her Dodge Dart to marry her high-school sweetheart, Larry. In the shadows of both the White Sands Missile Range and her own anxieties about life, Marilee meets a hitchhiking dwarf named Enoch. The unfolding of their uncannily erotic relationship is the heart of the novel, but Alpert gracefully weaves in the destinies of her secondary characters?an insurance salesman in hiding, a buck-toothed checkout girl, a landlady tamale chef. Comprised of conversations and chance meetings, the story is fundamentally subdued and rarely surprising; there is never much tension about whether Marilee will marry the fraud Larry. However, Alpert's imagery?melons on a car seat, a stunted boy digging in the dirt with a spoon?is inventive and often beautiful. Wry dialogue and a lean sense of humor give life to this novel about the awkward comedy of overcoming loneliness. - Publishers Weekly Marilee journeys from Los Angeles to New Mexico to surprise her fiance, Larry, who has taken a job on the Alamogordo Air Force Base to gain, in one of his antithetical Zen experiments, an understanding of peace. Sympathy for Enoch, a hitchhiking dwarf, disrupts her orderly plans. Enoch's free spirit, quirky humor, and inquisitive mind contrast vividly with Larry's controlling ways. In a separate voyage, Figman, an insurance claims adjuster on the run, relocates to New Mexico after surviving a lethal car crash that results in an unfair lawsuit against him. Now prone to migraines and the conviction that he is dying, Figman embarks on new adventures. Late in the novel, these two distinct love stories converge on a highway in near collision. This is a curious, fun, intriguing, and recommended first novel. - Library Journal "I am so profoundly overwhelmed that all I can manage is 'Cathryn Alpert is a wonderful writer.' I am pulling for her to have great success." -- ANNE LAMOTT "Alpert offers fine, likable characters and a restrained, bouncy plot. Here is a promising writer who should be watched." DAVE EGGERS FOR THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE "Aside from being just about the funniest road novel I've read in years, it's also got two of the most touching and wonderful love stories I've ever read. Ms. Alpert's prose is a delight to read, and her amazing characters are handled with a wonderful affection and intelligence. Quite frankly, I loved this novel. -JAMES CRUMLEY, author of THE LAST GOOD KISS "...funny, irreverent fiction about a startlingly touching love story, topped off with a disconcerting glimpse into the nighttime soul of America." -ALISON BAKER, author of HOW I CAME WEST, AND WHY I STAYED "An entertaining novel that offers witty repartee and endearing characters" --BOOKLIST
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