August 15, 2019
A first-time novelist explores desire and identity in the mid-20th century. The year is 1956. Muriel is 21. She lives in San Diego with her husband, Lee. He's just been discharged from the Navy and dreams of buying a piece of land in a part of California that is just being developed. Muriel has made no secret of her lack of interest in this plan; what she does keep secret, though, is her passion for betting on horses. One of her waitressing jobs is in a bar frequented by retired jockeys, bookies, and other habitués of the racetrack. She listens to their gossip, makes canny wagers, and passes off her winnings as tips. Muriel's success gives her a sense of control and possibility, and the fact that she keeps her gambling from her husband gives her a sense of independence. Marriage is not quite what she expected it to be. When she agreed to move to California, it was on the understanding that Lee's brother, Julius, would be coming with them. Lee is solid and reliable and clearly devoted to her, but it's Julius who inspires her to imagine a world larger and more exciting than the one she's known. Instead, Julius wanders the West until he lands in Las Vegas. The city suits him. Like Muriel, he's a gambler, but he also discovers that Las Vegas is a place where his sexuality does not make him conspicuous. Pufahl presents a vision of the 1950s that is distinctly at odds with the idea that this decade was an American golden age. She reminds us that there has never been a time when women didn't work outside the home and that, in our nostalgic remembering of that era, we tend to elide the bigotry and oppression experienced by many. More than that, though, Pufahl offers exquisite prose. Her style is slow and deliberate but also compelling because her language is so lyrical and specific. Consider Muriel's first glimpse of the thoroughbreds: "They are tall and obdurate and only lightly controlled." The book is filled with such rhythmically lovely, splendidly evocative, and masterfully precise descriptions. In these moments, it feels like Pufahl could not possibly have said what she needed to say with any other words. Fiction to linger over.
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September 2, 2019
Pufahl’s powerful debut follows two brothers just back from the Korean War and the woman from Kansas who loves them both. Muriel agrees to marry Lee not long after he and his brother, Julius, step off their ship in Long Beach, but it’s Julius with whom she finds a haunting affinity. When he disappears, both Muriel and Lee live for word from him again. Muriel and Julius are gamblers; Muriel overhears horse betting tips from men who drink at the Heyday Lounge in San Diego where she works. Muriel wins enough at the Del Mar racetrack to buy her husband the lot on which he builds their dream house. Meanwhile, in Las Vegas, Julius falls in love with Henry, a tender card cheat who’s run out of town. Desperate to find him, Julius returns to his brother’s house, steals money from Muriel, and goes in search of him. Muriel, in turn, searches for Julius, and finds herself instead. SoCal’s illicit gay joints, Mexico, and memories of Kansas are finely wrought, though by the time Muriel discovers that the mystery Julius represents actually resides deep inside her own self, Pufahl’s gorgeous metaphors and heartbreaking revelations may make readers feel like less is more. Peopled by singular characters and suffused with a keen sense of time and place, Pufahl’s debut casts a fascinating spell. This melancholy story will show up in the dreams of those whose heartstrings it has tugged.
September 1, 2019
DEBUT After their navy discharge in the early 1950s, Lee and brother Julius, along with Lee's wife, Muriel, hope for a better life in postwar San Diego. Lee wants the three of them to get in on the housing boom and enjoy a settled suburban life and urges Muriel to sell property she inherited back in Kansas to provide money for their dream. Because Muriel is reluctant to give up her mother's house, she devises a secret plan to fool Lee. Julius wants no part of suburbia and, sensing Muriel's growing feelings for him, falls into the risky life of Las Vegas casinos, winning money off hapless tourists and hustling in a town wrapped in radioactive fallout from bomb tests in the nearby desert. While working pit surveillance in the Golden Nugget, Julius and a fellow casino worker become lovers, but Henry vanishes after being thrown out of a casino for cheating. Julius follows his lead to Tijuana's dangerous underworld and eventually wreaks havoc on the lives of Lee and Muriel. VERDICT Debut novelist Pufahl's sharp, gritty details of 1950s San Diego and Las Vegas effectively draw the reader into her protagonists' struggles to bring meaning to their lives, however different their experiences. [See Prepub Alert, 11/5/19.]--Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Grand Junction, CO
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September 1, 2019
Midway through this debut novel, a transient gambler named Julius gifts his estranged brother, Lee, a horse. Julius buys her believing she's a mustang when in fact she isn't. She seems to be a symbol for the book's two protagonists, Julius and Muriel (Lee's wife), both of whom are caught between the norms of postwar California life and queer desire. Fearing she is merely a wife, Muriel pursues independence at the racetrack, winning big and using her sense of power to begin exploring bars, hotels, and other sites of clandestine passion. On the run from his sexuality, Julius heads to Nevada, falls in love with a card shark, and then follows his lover to the back rooms of Mexico's border cities, gambling at card tables and in late-night encounters. Pufahl's prose is lush and slow with the romance of emotion and the postwar frontier. Her dialogue is sparse and pointed, every word deliberately spoken. On Swift Horses is a queer Western for an utterly contemporary audience.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)