Mystery Ride

Robert Boswell's Mystery Ride is the latest fiction novel I've read. I was introduced to this book in the first creative writing course I took, a sophomore at Stanford. We read the first three chapters as an introduction to character and tension, and I was intrigued. I then met Robert Boswell at the Napa Valley Writers' Conference last summer. I really liked him; he was a captivating lecturer and his stories are hilarious and discomforting at the same time.

Like most American novels, Mystery Ride is a story of a dysfunctional American family, tracing the interaction of several families in various states of divorce, affairs, infatuation, religion, teenage rebellion, and pregnancy. He sets this clash of culture on the backdrop of California and a farm in Iowa. His characterization is amazing, and the situations conjured by his characters have intense drama, emotion, and tension. The dialogue is witty, the character development is believable, and the details are vivid. I recommend this novel to any avid reader. In it, Boswell really attempts to capture what it means to love, what it means to live.

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