First Wormwood, Nevada Review

From Booklist:

Wormwood, Nevada.

Oppegaard, David (Author)

Dec 2009. 256 p. St. Martin's, hardcover, $24.99. (9780312381110).

Within hours of their arrival in sun-blasted, hardscrabble Wormwood, Nevada, Tyler and Anna Mayfield watch a meteorite crash into the parking lot of the Taco Thunder Mexican restaurant. It’s a dramatic introduction to their new hometown, and as the community bakes under a sun as fierce as “the angry eye of God,” some of the natives begin to reveal themselves as deeply dotty. One mounts a chaise lounge next to the crater to await the End. Tyler is invited to join the Visitation Society, which plans to welcome wise aliens who will teach earthlings about peace and happiness and mediate their arrival with nervous Russian and Chinese militarists. And everyone tries to cope with loneliness and the need to believe in something.

For Oppegaard, less seems to be more. His style is matter-of-fact, even when Tyler has a one-sided conversation with an alien, and he only hints at the nature of the angst troubling the citizens of Wormwood. Even so, readers who take the genre-bending journey to Wormwood will be glad they did.

— Thomas Gaughan