I do so love absurd comedies; the weirder, the better in my book.  And this one so hits on all points.  The cast of characters are picked as though out of a jar full of slips of paper with absurd characters.  The plot is semi-serious but makes it hard to feel tension when your characters are just romping all over the place.

So we start with Francie who has just arrived in Roswell for her best friend's destination wedding - the local UFO museum.  Francie is desperately hoping she can talk her friend out of this badly chosen groom and wedding.  The town is in an uproar over the latest UFO sightings but Francie is only focused on her friend, Serena.  So there is a certain irony in that Francie is the one who gets truly abducted by an alien.

The alien grabs her as she's looking in the back seat of Serena's car for something.  It looks like a tumbleweed with a multitude of tentacles and manages to insist on Francie driving the car.  Confident that she can outwit a non-verbal tumbleweed, she looks for the first opportunity to escape her erstwhile kidnapper.  But the darn thing always seems to know when something is up and stalls her every attempt.  They are flagged down by a hitchhiker and while Francie frantically tries to tell him to back away from the car, it's too late for him.  He gets dragged into the car and off they go again.

As the car starts to run out of gas, Francie is able to convince the alien that they need to stop but her efforts to thwart the kidnapping alien only results in the convenience store clerk also being unceremoniously dragged into the car. 

The car now contains one Maid of Honor in a fiber optic gown (glows in the dark), a fellow on his way to the UFO convention to sell bogus anti-abduction insurance policies and a convenience store clerk with an unhealthy obsession with UFOs.  Oh, and one frustrated alien who seems to be searching for something in the New Mexico desert.  At one stop when the alien appears to be getting its bearings, Francie almost steps on a rattlesnake, a creature unknown to the alien.  Frantically, she tries to tell the alien to stay away but, instead, he uses his tentacles to grab the snake so fast it doesn't have time to bite her.  She credits him with saving her life but later she discovers that it credits her with saving its life.  And the incredibly fast whip-like tentacles cause her to dub it Indy, as in Indiana Jones and his whip.

Along the way they end up capturing, by accident, a little old lady on her way to play the slots at a casino and by now the car is getting a little cramped; which Francie mentions, in frustration.  Surprisingly, Indy seems to understand because the next thing he does is abduct Joseph, the driver of a large RV…which, mercifully, has a shower and lots of food.  The RV also has a video system and a large collection of every single Western movie ever made; which turns out to be an excellent way to teach the little alien how to communicate with them.  By now, everyone is sympathetic to the little guy who hasn't actually hurt anyone and seems to be frantic to find something/someone/somewhere.  Well, almost everyone; Lyle, the convenience store clerk is adamant that only nefarious intentions can be expected from an alien. 

But, they reason, if they can communicate, they can help him quicker and Francie might actually make it to the wedding on time.  Unfortunately, something on one of the movies throws the tumbleweed into a panicked frenzy.  It takes Francie an hour to calm it down and get all the tentacles untangled.  Thereafter, any slight mention of Monument Valley or an unfortunate scene in a movie (and loads of them were made at Monument Valley back in the day) sends the alien into a tizzy and they can't figure out why.

As the unlikely troupe lend their various opinions and even their abilities (Eula Mae teaches the tumbleweed how to play cards) to help it, it always seems to fall to Francie to have an intuition on how to communicate with it.  And she does, on occasion, succeed; but not to the extent of understanding what's so horrible about Monument Valley or where the little alien needs to go or what he's hoping to find there…yet.

There's a hysterical scene in Las Vegas when Indy is apparently attempting to get Francie to her wedding…but there's a bit of communication breakdown when it insists she's at the wedding chapel to marry Wade, the con man who sells anti-abduction insurance.  But things don't get really serious until the group realizes that the FBI is onto them somehow.  Then they have to figure out how to escape and get back to their real business - helping Indy find what it's looking for.

This was just so much fun.  It might be a stretch to imagine a more diverse group of strangers thrown together who, for the most part, accept the presence of an alien and are even sympathetic to it.  But it works and the results are terrific. And with the exception of Francie and Lyle, no one else is who they appear to be which adds a layer of mystery and fun.  I love the whole roadtrip vibe and I love weird ensemble groups on a quest.  The dialogue is great and you just have to find yourself rooting for the tumbleweed.  The ending was glorious and not clichéd at all.  In fact, I'd be hard-pressed to have imagined the plot resolution if you'd asked me.  At one point, I was wondering if we'd discover the tumbleweed was actually a truant adolescent hiding from its parental units - think of the 1985 movie Explorers.  That might've worked but what Willis worked out was even better.  If you like your fiction quirky but with a solid, serious plot, this should work for you.  Highly recommended for quirk-loving readers.  ~~  Catherine Book

For more titles by Connie Willis click here