No Way Home - T. C. Boyle

No Way Home tells the haunting story of Terrence Tully, an LA medical resident who is abruptly informed that his mother has died. Arriving at her home in a forlorn Nevada desert town, the naive doctor finds himself like a swimmer caught in a riptide, drawn into a love triangle involving the manipulative, margarita-swilling receptionist Bethany and her ex-boyfriend Jesse, a vengeful middle-school teacher cocksure about his sexual prowess. There is indeed no way home for Tully, who cannot extricate himself from this aimless, post-twenty-something world where motorcycle races and violent brawls puncture the daily grind of nowhere jobs, aimless sex, and recreational highs.

Is retribution, Boyle asks, a natural human instinct? Can sexual jealousy bring on a level of vengeance that is downright pathological? With its depiction of a desiccated town struggling in the dark shadows of a luminous, mountainous horizon, No Way Home is a tour de force by an American master at his finest.