Rocket City - Softcover

Reminiscent of such modern classics as Cowboys Are My Weakness and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, with a touch of Geek Love thrown in for good measure, Rocket City is a deliciously original and strangely moving novel of alienation in America's Southwest.

"Three melons and a dwarf sat in the front seat of Marilee's '72 Dodge but the cop was not amused". Marilee is Marilee Levitay, who has driven to Alamogordo, New Mexico, birthplace of the atomic bomb, to be reunited with her wayward sweetheart. The melons come courtesy of her mother, in case she needs liquid in the desert. And the dwarf is Enoch Swann, the enigmatic hitchhiker who is about to lead Marilee way, way off course. As Marilee and Enoch cruise ever farther into that radioactive New Mexico sunset - and cross narrative paths with a renegade insurance adjuster fleeing too many claims - Cathryn Alpert sweeps us into a parallel universe where the motels are called "the Trinity", the supermarket check-out girls have gorgeous two-colored eyes, and true love sometimes comes in awfully odd packages.