The reader is sort of plopped into these spaces as if it were another world. And I wanted to do that in the present tense and in that way without much exposition. Shannon Pufahl: I was just talking to somebody the other day and they were saying, “What do you want people to know about this book?” That I tried very much to create a world that people could recognize even though they haven’t been there. And you’re really putting readers in there from page one of On Swift Horses. Jennifer Baker: The occupancy of space is such an important thing in prose, especially in narrative. She and I spoke a lot about locale and how it plays out in her work, the use of gambling as metaphor in On Swift Horses, and the ways in which vulnerability can play out for people over time. Pufahl writes with confidence and unravels many layers, not just for the settings she describes but for the characters who inhabit them.
As their lives, fears, and desires rotate around one another in the narrative, the two rarely hold space in the same location, yet location is of utmost importance in the way Pufahl weaves a larger story of an ever-changing world and the people attempting to fit into it.Ī Stegner Fellow and graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. For Julius, a closeted gay man, his dismissal from the armed forces means stability is a fallacy, especially after he gets a taste of it.
Muriel’s life is stationary but secretive her trips to the track and her a life as a server and housewife seem good enough, until they aren’t. For Muriel and Julius, gambling-at the race track and casinos, respectively-results in some hefty gains and unexpected losses. The winding roads they take, both literally and metaphorically, reveal their methods of hiding who they are and what they want in order to fit in with societal expectations. The story follows Muriel, newly wed to Lee, and her transient brother-in-law Julius.
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