Rocket City

Set in the motels, highways and restaurants of New Mexico, Alpert's first novel is an elegant and witty, if modest, peek into the lives of a handful of characters in the American Southwest. Successfully sidestepping the cliches of the road novel, Alpert introduces her cast of fully dimensional characters with strong, selective strokes. At 26, Marilee Levitay (whose French-punning name is one of the author's few breaches of subtlety) is crossing the desert in her Dodge Dart to marry her high-school sweetheart, Larry. In the shadows of both the White Sands Missile Range and her own anxieties about life, Marilee meets a hitchhiking dwarf named Enoch. The unfolding of their uncannily erotic relationship is the heart of the novel, but Alpert gracefully weaves in the destinies of her secondary characters--an insurance salesman in hiding, a buck-toothed checkout girl, a landlady tamale chef. Comprised of conversations and chance meetings, the story is fundamentally subdued and rarely surprising; there is never much tension about whether Marilee will marry the fraud Larry. However, 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. (May)