Wormwood, Nevada [Hardcover]

David Oppegaard (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 8, 2009

Tyler and Anna Mayfield have just relocated from Nebraska to the sun scorched desert town of Wormwood, Nevada. They find themselves in a strange new landscape populated with old school cowboys, alien cultists, meth dealers, and doomsday prophets. Loneliness and desperation pervade Wormwood, and when a meteorite lands in the center of town, its fragile existence begins to unravel as many believe the end of the world is near, while others simply seek a reason to believe in anything at all.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A meteorite crashing into the Nevada desert sparks a search for meaning and purpose in Oppegaard's intriguing if flat follow-up to The Suicide Collectors. Tyler and Anna Mayfield move to Wormwood, Nev., looking to escape the postcollege funk that permeated their lives in Nebraska. When a night out at the local bar is interrupted with a massive explosion nearby, the young couple find themselves in the middle of an already off-kilter town going meteor crazy. Tyler, haunted by the disappearance of his older brother years ago, sees booze, weed and fatigue-induced visions of aliens and becomes involved with a group that believes visitors will arrive imminently. Meanwhile, Anna, a former Miss Nebraska, suffers apocalyptic nightmares amid fears that the best years of her life are slipping away. Oppegaard deftly aligns the inner fears and waning hopes of his well-rounded protagonists with the paranormal tremors, but the tension all but dies in the final act as the novel unspools into a disappointingly diffuse anticlimax. (Dec.)
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Review

Oppegaard's explanation for his use of the clichés of alien life and the clichés of feminine marital ennui is surprising and completely satisfying.

--Boston Globe

WORMWOOD, NEVADA...is a haunting novel with a vivid setting and memorable characters, a story of cosmic love, loss and yearning. While I haven't read his previous book, THE SUICIDE COLLECTORS, I've added it to my reading list now. --Bookreporter.com

The result is complex and compelling, a book that appeals both for its treatment of the spectacular and its interesting take on its characters' personal growth. --The Rumpus.net

Within hours of their arrival in sun-blasted, hardscrabble Wormwood, Nevada, Tyler and Anna Mayfieldwatch 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, Booklist

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 246 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1st edition (December 8, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312381115
• ISBN-13: 978-0312381110
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 6.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,581,870 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

David Oppegaard is the author of the Bram Stoker nominated science fiction novel The Suicide Collectors and the newly released Wormwood, Nevada. David holds a B.A. in English Literature from St. Olaf College and an M.F.A. in Writing from Hamline University. A finalist for the Indiana Review Fiction Award and the Iowa Fiction Award, David has worked as an optician, a receptionist at the U of MN, a standardized test scorer, a farm hand, an editorial assistant, a trash picker for St. Paul public housing, a library circulation assistant, and as a child minder on a British cruise ship. He currently lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Story of Cosmic Love, Loss and Yearning, December 14, 2009

By 

Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Wormwood, Nevada (Hardcover)

In early June, Tyler Mayfield and his wife Anna embark on a journey from Nebraska to Wormwood, Nevada, where they hope to start anew. Tyler, a teacher, has been alerted to a job opening in the area, and he uses that as an incentive to begin a new life with Anna, a former Miss Nebraska beauty queen. However, they have no idea how drastically their lives --- and the lives of the citizens of Wormwood --- would be changed.

During the long drive, with his wife asleep in the car, Tyler glances in the rearview mirror of his Volvo and catches a glimpse of a figure with "dark, almond-shaped eyes staring back at him, cold and unblinking." When Tyler looks again, it has disappeared. Just who is this figure? And why does it remind him of his brother, Cody, and Cody's disappearance all those years ago, which still consumes Tyler to this day?

Tyler assumes his backseat vision has occurred because he is overtired, but the appearance of the odd passenger is just the start of a strange, cosmic adventure for Tyler and Anna. When the couple arrives in the middle of the desert, they are greeted by Tyler's Aunt Bernice (aka Bernie) and her lovable dog, Roscoe. Bernie is the person who got word to Tyler about the teaching job in Wormwood, and she has invited him and Anna to move in with her until they can save money to buy a place of their own.

Bernie is a chain-smoking, hard-drinking cafeteria worker --- one of the "Hairnets" --- at the local high school. She has lived in the desert for decades and knows how it affects visitors and even long-time residents. Not long after the couple's arrival, she warns them that the "heat gets to people." But the two seem to be doing well enough: Tyler begins teaching summer school remedial composition, albeit to suspicious and unwilling students, and Anna finds a job at a local casino.

Things begin to change, however, when a meteor streaks across the sky. It lands in the middle of the Taco Thunder parking lot and leaves a deep crater. The blast from the landing propels Mr. Diaz, the owner of the restaurant, into a dumpster blocks away. Mr. Diaz is in shock, but thankfully he survives. After he returns home from the hospital, he abandons his restaurant to become a sentinel at the crash site, warning the denizens of Wormwood that "the end is near."

Things turn deadly in Wormwood after Tyler and a new friend strike out in search of meteorite fragments and witness a raid on a meth lab. And it isn't long after the meteorite lands that Tyler's visions return and Anna's nightmares begin...along with a feeling of impending doom that pervades her waking hours.

WORMWOOD, NEVADA is my first introduction to David Oppegaard's work. It is a haunting novel with a vivid setting and memorable characters, a story of cosmic love, loss and yearning. While I haven't read his previous book, THE SUICIDE COLLECTORS, I've added it to my reading list now.

--- Reviewed by Donna Volkenannt

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars fast-paced science fiction thriller, December 9, 2009

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Wormwood, Nevada (Hardcover)

Tyler and Anna Mayfield leave Nebraska when he accepts an English teaching position in Wormwood, Nevada where his Aunt Bernie resides. The town is in the middle of the great basin desert, sixty-seven miles from any other hamlet.

As they near the town on the second day of the boring drive Tyler nearly crashes their vehicle because he saw something in the back seat; but nothing is there. He continues to see odd beings. He believes are aliens or he else he thinks he is going insane as Anna never sees them. Instead she has nasty nightmares that the end of the world is near although she thinks it is a psychological fear of growing old and no longer able to win the Miss Nebraska beauty pageant. When a meteorite crashes nearby, the townsfolk believe the end has started while Bernie introduces Tyler to a local astronomy club who believe aliens are remaking the world in their image.

This fast-paced science fiction thriller hooks readers from the opening scene when Tyler swears he saw a strange looking essence in the backseat of the car and never slows down although the end seems somewhat less exhilarating than anticipated with the build up. Anna and Tyler are fascinating protagonists as she fears aging and he never recovered from his older brother vanishing years ago. However, ironically in spite of being the leads, neither holds the plot together; instead the town of Wormwood with its isolation serves as the focus. Fans will enjoy David Oppegaard's entertaining thriller as meth labs meet ET.

Harriet Klausner

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Intriguing, Not Sure What to Make of it, August 29, 2010

By 

AirCharcoal (IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Wormwood, Nevada (Hardcover)

I found this book intriguing, & not really sure what the author was trying to communicate...it seems a mixture of science fiction (rather weak in that area), New Age, & sort of the flow of life (strong in that part)...the parts don't come together easily though, & my feeling is the author is better at conceiving single-event scenarios rather than constructing a compact full-length story. However, it is definitely different, very esoteric, & it's refreshing that a writer exploring a direction where reader acceptance is uncertain; we need them, there are too many 'mainstream' authors.