Blue Ride [Paperback]

Ken Wilkerson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1998

A collection of 15 stories portraying raw, absorbing characters in the desert towns of the American Southwest. Exceptionally atmospheric and amusing.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Ken Wilkerson traces his ancestry to the Scottish Highlands, but lives in the California desert, where he has devoted a significant portion of his life to roaming the backroads and forgotten trails. He has researched the desert tribes and Early Man period, walked the Chemehuevi Salt Song trail and camped in old village sites from the Mexican border to the Upper Mojave. Working over the years in cities as diverse as Borrego Springs, Twentynine Palms, Yuma, Los Angeles, El Centro, Joshua Tree and Palm Springs, he has collected enough stories and characters to fill many a volume. The people, places and events described in BLUE RIDE are all drawn in one way or another from his real-life experiences.

Product Details

• Paperback: 122 pages
• Publisher: Xenos Books (June 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1879378337
• ISBN-13: 978-1879378339
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,405,699 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "On the road in the California desert", July 3, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Blue Ride (Paperback)

I would like to enter a reader review of Ken Wilkerson's "Blue Ride", which I found to be very engaging. It's woven together like a series of vignettes, with recurring characters living around the highways and small towns of the Southern California desert. It starts off with a fast, allegorical tale of alienation---then moves on to an amusing misadventure in a bordertown bar--- then a story about a couple amiable drifters on an existential search---then the jaded narrative of "Jack Chase", an on-the-skids detective---then it continues on, revisiting the participants in various desert locales. Along the ride are visitations from two artists, Andy Wilf and Gram Parsons, who lived similarly chaotic lives, and an account of the author and a companion as they journeyed on foot down an ancient Indian trail. There's a lot of heart, humor, craziness, adventure, compulsive wandering, tequila and contemporary lore of the desert packed into 122 pages. This is a solid piece of work.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A captivating ride, June 27, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Blue Ride (Hardcover)

I just read BLUE RIDE and would like to agree with the reader review from Chicago. Blue Ride is the true California desert, as I knew it during 33 years of living there, before the growing spread of tourism and overdevelopment. Blue Ride evokes the mystery of the pure desert, the ramshackle towns with colorful characters, the freedom of the open road in pre-homogenized America. It also serves as a documentation of a unique place and time in Southern California. The author's quirky adventures are very compelling

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A very original work, May 14, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Blue Ride (Hardcover)

I would like to recommend "Blue Ride". Having been raised in the California desert, I regard Blue Ride as a definitive work of that area. It's written in a lively style, with a sense of immediacy which transported me to those dusty towns and landscapes of my youth. The poetic descriptions of the various desert locales are deadly accurate, and the central characters are genuine renegades from the contemporary mainstream. Ken Wilkerson writes with poignancy, creating the taste of REAL LIFE in that intriguing corner of the southwest. A very original work.