I wanted to write about people who don’t get much play anywhere, in books or any other media, and whose stories I still struggle to find. The surprising image of that bomb spoke to a primary goal, actually, which was to rewrite the history of the 1950s to include forgotten people and places. What drew you to writing about identity and longing for a sense of belonging? This became a central image of the book, one that speaks to me of hubris, majesty, violence, and erasure – words that describe the West in the 1950s really well, I think. When I began researching, one archival photo stood out to me: tourists in fancy dress on a casino roof at 5 a.m., watching an atomic bomb explode in the desert beyond the city’s edge.

It was clear to me very early that Las Vegas would be a primary setting –the 1950s Vegas was a fabulous, strange, and transitional place, a haven for misfits, and a perfect place for this novel to start. I also knew I wanted to write a novel about gambling, and about queer life before the civil rights movements of the 60s and 70s. How and why did the setting of the 1950s West develop?įrom the beginning, I was interested, thematically, in the relationship between progress, risk, and history. Your novel is rich with detail and a strong sense of place. We corresponded via email about writing unique characters, what drew her to the 1950s American West, and why identity is so important to her writing. When the man goes missing without a trace, he sets out to figure out what happened. Then there is her brother-in-law, Julius, who falls in love with a man. There she becomes adept at gambling and finds a new part of her life to explore. She’s grows tired of her status as a housewife to Lee and becomes a waitress at a horse-racing track.

While On Swift Horses is set during that time period, Shannon Pufahl chose to explore identity in that time period through a group of unique characters.įirst, there’s Muriel. Stories about the American West in the 1950s are often told through the eyes of straight, white men.

Shannon pufahl on swift horses