Praise for Rocket City
By Cathryn Alpert
"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
"Rocket City is what a first novel should be: energetic, quixotic, different, devilish, eccentric and revelrous. . . . It's a hot quick yarn that keeps the reader in stitches." •Stephen Dixon
"Alpert offers fine, likable characters and a restrained, bouncy plot. Here is a promising writer who should be watched." •Dave Eggers, San Francisco Chronicle
"Cathryn Alpert is a wonderful writer." -Anne Lamott
"A disconcerting glimpse into the nighttime soul of America." -Alison Baker
"Two deftly rendered, parallel love stories . . . an entertaining novel that offers witty repartee and endearing characters." - Booklist
". . . elegant and witty. . . . 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
"This is a curious, fun, intriguing, and recommended first novel." -Library Journal
"[Rocket City] is an offbeat, quirky novel that leaves you laughing, sighing, perhaps shedding a tear or two, and pondering the ways of human nature, love and life, but with a big smile on your face." -The Malibu Times
". . . a road trip kind of a book—the destination, the human heart." -Santa Cruz Daily Sentinel
"Alpert's novel is full of twists and turns, with more surprises than on a roadside diner menu, and characters much fresher. With its lustrous prose we can feel the desert heat. Feel the fine coat of dust in our nostrils; see the stars in the desert sky while floating in the cool black water of a motel pool in the middle of the night." -La Gazette
"By turns hilariously funny and wickedly cynical. . . . Remarkably, the author keeps her multiple story elements moving at breakneck speed and makes the absurd believable. It's a blast." -Books of the Southwest
"Alpert crosses the two storylines just once, in a bar scene with a host of dwarves that brings to mind Katherine Dunn's Geek Love. Meanwhile, she runs her character all over the New Mexico backcountry but does little with rockets, military life, or the heritage of the atomic bomb. And her moral is exactly this profound: Love is where you find it. Still, boy-meets-girl never grows old, and, particularly with the ridiculous Figman, newcomer Alpert strikes a pleasing tone." -The Missouri Review
"Rocket City is a book to read again, for all the clues and pleasures of a skillful and funny writer. It is even more fun to read for the beautiful prose and authentic setting and dialogue." -The Bloomsbury Reveiw
"Wry dialogue, inventive imagery, and erotic relationships draw us into the destiny of this curious gathering of Tom Stoppard-type characters. With all its twists and turns, chance encounters, desert skies and motel pools, Rocket City is a love story that seduces us into the romance of the road." -Mill Valley Literary Review
"Cathryn Alpert also shows a big heart and an engaging serio-comic talent." •san jose mercury news
"The great appealing factor pervading Rocket City is the true and warm-hearted dialogue that fills every page." -The Democrat
". . . stunning . . . brilliant and quirky" -The Daily Lobo
"This is one of those excellent novels, from a small press, that slips into bookstores without the hype of a big advertising campaign. It deserves to be noticed." -The Edge
"Alpert's bold, whimsical, kinetic novel takes us through a region steeped in a mysterious history where things are rarely what they seem. . . ." -Metro Santa Cruz
R O C K E T C I T Y
This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents
are either the product of the author's imagination or are used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living
or dead, business establishments, events,
or locales is entirely coincidental.
Unbridled Books
Copyright © 1995 by Cathryn Alpert
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Alpert, Cathryn, 1952–2010
Rocket city / Cathryn Alpert.
p. cm.
Summary: "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. 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"—Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-1-60953-077-8 (pbk.)
1. Hitchhiking—Fiction. 2. New Mexico —Fiction.
3. Dwarfs—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3551.L69R63 2012
813'.54— dc23
2012008359
Portions of Rocket City have appeared in O. Henry Festival
Stories 1989 (TransVerse Press, Greensboro, North Carolina)
and Puerto del Sol, Vol. 26, No. 2, and Vol. 27, No. 1.
book design by sh.cv
ALAMOGORDO
Three melons and a dwarf sat in the front seat of Marilee's '72 Dodge, but the cop was not amused. "I'd get rid of that bumper sticker if I was you," he said. " Folks 'round here, they're proud of their history." Marilee's bumper sticker said, "One nuclear bomb can ruin your whole day." Wrong place, wrong time. This spot on the road crossing White Sands Missile Range was fifty miles southwest of Alamogordo.
"You two traveling together?" the cop asked.
"Might say," said Enoch.
The cop's lips drew together like a drawstring purse. It was midnight and he wore sunglasses. "I'd like to see your license," he said, shining his flashlight at the little man riding shotgun.
"No can do."
"You have any I.D.?"
"Nope."
"What's your name?"
"Enoch Swann."
"Where you from?"
"Des Moines."
The