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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.

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