5/24/2023 0 Comments ON SWIFT HORSES by PUFAHL SHANNON![]() The first woman in her county to own a car and get a divorce, Muriel’s mother “was Catholic but would not attend any Mass where the women weren’t allowed to wear pants.” (Of the church Muriel and her mother attend, Pufahl writes, “In a region so Lutheran and sane the church was an excess more unsettling than disliked, as if its beauty were a mandate on God’s own aesthetic.”)Īfter her mother’s death, Muriel, 19, embraces a life of relative conventionality, marrying a man named Lee and moving with him to newly developing San Diego. First, we meet Muriel, a young woman who grew up in midcentury Kansas with an unconventional mother. ![]() “On Swift Horses” gets its title from Isaiah -“‘We will ride on swift horses’ -Therefore those who pursue you shall be swift!” - and it tells two stories of desire pursued and fled from. ![]() It’s a risky choice, an almost-but-not-quite over-the-top choice, and it absolutely works. ![]() Of a horse’s movement, Pufahl writes, “She moves straight forward and her march draws dust which rises motely around her.” Almost everything you need to know about “On Swift Horses” lies in that one word, “motely,” which transforms a noun (a mote of dust) into an adverb. ![]()
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