Her voice is muscular, awesome, and pure. Read this book for the adventure, for the keening lyricism of the lost and searching, but mostly read this book because no one writes like Shannon Pufahl. “ On Swift Horses is about both risk and the risqué, about daring to know, name, and act on our own desires. It is, simply put, a masterpiece.”- Anthony Marra, author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena As an exploration of life lived in the outer distances of plain sight, it is suffused with hazard and touched by grace, furnished with the longevity of a postwar classic and the immediacy of the present tense. On Swift Horses is, for me, one of those books. “Once in a rare while you come across a novel of such transfixing beauty that it enlarges your faith in the medium itself. Shannon Pufahl discusses hew new novel, On Swift Horses with Anthony Marra.

Through the parks and plazas of Tijuana and the bars and beaches of San Diego, On Swift Horses mesmerisingly charts the journeys of Muriel and Julius on their separate quests for freedom, new horizons and love.This event will be held at our 9th Ave. As tourists gather on roof tops to watch atomic clouds bloom in the desert, Henry and Julius's love burns in the shadows - until one night Henry is forced to flee. There he meets Henry, a blackjack artist and a man who shares Julius's passions, and his secrets. Julius has found himself in Las Vegas, where his gift for gambling leads him to a job patrolling the boards above the casino tables, watching through the cigarette smoke for chancers and cheats.

Instead it is Lee's brother, Julius, a thief and Korean War veteran - and someone she has only met once - whom she longs to tell, and who has struck a spark of promise and possibility inside her quietly ordered life. When she begins, secretly, to bet on the horses and, shockingly, to win, she feels strangely unready to share her good luck and its origins with her husband Lee. As she pours coffee and empties ashtrays, she eavesdrops on her customers, the ex-jockeys and trainers of the Del Mar racetrack. Muriel, newly married and newly orphaned, works as a waitress in a San Diego diner. A breathtakingly beautiful debut novel of revolution, chance and the gambles we take with the human heart.

ON SWIFT HORSES by PUFAHL SHANNON