On Swift Horses - Paperback

by Shannon Pufahl (Author)

Now a major motion picture starring Daisy Edgar-Jones and Jacob Elordi

"A rich and rugged western about dreams deferred and living defiantly." --O: The Oprah Magazine

A Lambda Literary Award Finalist and a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice

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

Muriel is newly married and restless, transplanted from her 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 sly, itinerant brother-in-law, Julius, who made the world feel bigger than she had imagined. 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 a young card cheat named Henry. As each gets increasingly lonely, lost, and wild, will they be able to find one another again?

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.

Author Biography

Shannon Pufahl grew up in rural Kansas. She teaches at Stanford University, where she was a Stegner Fellow in fiction. Her essays have appeared in The Threepenny Review and elsewhere, on topics ranging from John Brown and the antebellum Midwest, to personal memoir. She lives in the Bay Area with her wife and their dog.