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The Road to Roswell: A Novel Kindle Edition

by Connie Willis (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.3 839 ratings

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A delightful novel about alien invasions, conspiracies, and the incredibly silly things people are willing to believe—some of which may actually be true—from the Nebula and Hugo award-winning author of Blackout and All Clear

“An absolute blast with abundant humor, copious references to old westerns, and . . . a delightful, intergalactic twist on the romantic comedy.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

A WALL STREET JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

When level-headed Francie arrives in Roswell, New Mexico, for her college roommate’s UFO-themed wedding—complete with a true-believer bridegroom—she can’t help but roll her eyes at all the wide-eyed talk of aliens, which obviously don’t exist. Imagine her surprise, then, when she is abducted by one.

Odder still, her abductor is far from what the popular media have led her to expect, with a body like a tumbleweed and a mass of lightning-fast tentacles. Nor is Francie the only victim of the alien’s abduction spree. Before long, he has acquired a charming con man named Wade, a sweet little old lady with a casino addiction, a retiree with a huge RV and a love for old Westerns, and a UFO-chasing nutjob who is thoroughly convinced the alien intends to probe them and/or take over the planet.

But the more Francie gets to know the alien, the more convinced she becomes that he’s not an invader. That he’s in trouble and she has to help him. Only she doesn’t know how—or even what the trouble is.

Part alien-abduction adventure, part road trip saga, part romantic comedy, The Road to Roswell is packed full of Men in Black, Elvis impersonators, tourist traps, rattlesnakes, chemtrails, and Close Encounters of the Third, Fourth, and Fifth kind. Can Francie, stuck in a neon green bridesmaid’s dress, save the world—and still make it back for the wedding?

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Paise for Connie Willis

“A novelist who can plot like Agatha Christie and whose books possess a bounce and stylishness that Preston Sturges might envy.”—The Washington Post

“One of America’s finest writers . . . Willis can tell a story so packed with thrills, comedy, drama and a bit of red herring that the result is apt to satisfy the most discriminating, and hungry, reader.”—The Denver Post

“A wit with a common touch who’s read more great books, and makes better use of them in her work, than two or three lit professors put together.”—Newsday

“A national treasure.”—San Antonio Express-News

“Willis can tell a story like no other. . . . One of her specialties is sparkling, rapid-fire dialogue; another, suspenseful plotting; and yet another, dramatic scenes so fierce that they burn like after-images in the reader’s memory.”—The Village Voice

“Willis’s fiction is one of the most intelligent delights of our genre.”—Locus

“[Willis’s] six Nebula Awards and ten Hugo Awards confirm her eminence in speculative fiction, but her versatile range and forthright wit wouldn’t be out of place in the literary mainstream.”—Publishers Weekly

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One

Paul: Yeah, well, you’re killin’ yourself. A friend can’t be worth that.
Hogy: Well now, how would you know? Did you ever have one?

—The Virginian

Serena wasn’t in the airport waiting area when Francie got off the plane in Albuquerque, but a man carrying a sign reading FIRST CONTACT COMMITTEE—WELCOME TO THE UFO FESTIVAL was.

UFO Festival? Serena hadn’t said anything about a UFO festival going on at the same time as her wedding. Maybe it’s not in Roswell, Francie thought hopefully. But of course it was. Where else would a UFO festival be?

And as if to confirm that, here came two guys in Star Trek uniforms and Spock ears, hurrying up to greet a third in a silver unitard and a gray alien mask with large black almond-shaped eyes and no nose.

Thank goodness I didn’t succeed in talking Ted into being my plus-one for this wedding, she thought. Or worse, Graham. She’d tried to talk somebody, anybody, from work into coming with her so Serena wouldn’t try to fix her up with someone, but when she’d told them where the wedding was, they’d all said no.

“Roswell?” Graham had said. “The place with all the UFO nut jobs?”

“Why is it in Roswell?” Ted had asked. “Does your friend live there?”

“No, she lives in Phoenix. They’re just having the wedding in Roswell.”

“Why?” Graham said. “Why would anyone in their right mind go to Roswell?” and she’d been forced to tell them that Serena was marrying one of those selfsame UFO nut jobs, at which point both of them had not only refused to be her plus-one but told her she was crazy for going herself.

“I have to,” she’d told them. “Serena asked me to be her maid of honor, and she’s one of my very best friends. She was my freshman roommate in college. We have a special bond.”

“A special bond?” Graham had said. “What are you, Sisters of the Traveling Pants or something?”

“No,” she’d said defensively, “but I owe her a lot. She saved my life when I was a freshman,” and tried to explain how, when she’d arrived at college in Tucson, knowing no one, homesick for New England, and shocked by the heat and barrenness of the Southwest, Serena had kept her from getting on the first plane home. She’d shown her around campus, introduced her to people, taught her what tumbleweeds and javelinas and saguaros were, and convinced her there weren’t any rattlesnakes on campus (which would definitely have sent Francie screaming back to Connecticut). And when Francie’s high school boyfriend had broken up with her two weeks later, Serena’d sat with her while she’d sobbed, told her “he wasn’t right for you at all,” and generally patched her back together.

“She’s been a terrific friend,” Francie said. “Sympathetic, funny, and—”

“And out of her mind if she believes all this aliens-from-outer-space garbage,” Graham had said. “I don’t know about you, but it’s my policy to avoid nut jobs, old roommates or not.”

Ted nodded. “I had a roommate my sophomore year who believed birds were spying on him. You don’t catch me going to his wedding.”

“She isn’t a nut job,” Francie protested. “She’s just a little . . . ditzy, and inclined to go along with what her boyfriends think.”

And she has terrible taste in men, Francie added silently. Worse than terrible. When Francie first met her, Serena had been dating a kamikaze BASE jumper who’d wanted her to dive headfirst into the Grand Canyon with him, and her taste hadn’t improved since then. She’d dated a gun-stockpiling survivalist and a breatharian, who believed you could survive on air and positive thinking, and been engaged to a soul shaman and a stormchaser.

“All the more reason not to go,” Graham had said. “You’ll just be condoning her marrying this guy.”

Ted had nodded. “Definitely complicit. Unless you’re going because you want to talk her out of it,” and Graham had pounced.

“That’s it, isn’t it? You’re going out there to pull one of those dramatic ‘speak now or forever hold your peace’ numbers, aren’t you?”

She’d insisted she wasn’t, but they hadn’t believed her and had refused to listen when she’d tried to explain that she wouldn’t have to talk Serena out of it—that Serena always came to her senses and started having second thoughts herself. That’s what had happened with the stormchaser. “He thinks tornadoes are an adventure, like The Wizard of Oz or something,” she’d told Francie, “but they’re dangerous! And he expects me to drive straight into them with him!”

All Francie’d had to do was stand there while Serena talked herself out of it and called the wedding off. But to have that happen, Francie had to be there to listen to her doubts and assure her she was doing the right thing. Serena counted on Francie to be her sounding board and her backup, to rescue her from making a terrible decision just like she’d rescued Francie so many times. “Friends are supposed to help each other, aren’t they?” Francie had asked Ted and Graham.

“Yeah, but there are limits,” Ted had said. “What if next time she decides to marry a serial killer and you talk her out of it and he comes after you?”

“She is not going to marry a serial killer.”

“My advice is to tell her something came up and you can’t come,” Graham said.

“Yeah, tell her you broke your leg or something,” Ted added.

“I can’t do that. I can’t just abandon her. She needs me.”

“Okay,” they’d said, “but don’t come crying to us if this turns out to be a complete disaster.”

Which it very well might, she thought, looking around the waiting area. Where was Serena? She’d specifically said she’d be at the airport to drive Francie down to Roswell. “That way we’ll have a chance to talk,” she’d said, and Francie had taken that as a sign Serena was already having second thoughts. So where is she?

Francie texted, Where R U?

No answer. Maybe she thinks we were supposed to meet at baggage claim, Francie thought, shouldered her carry-on, and went down the escalator to see if Serena was there.

She wasn’t, but a number of people going to the UFO Festival were, and yes, the festival was in Roswell, because their T-shirts all said so, and as if that wasn’t enough, they were all talking about a UFO sighting that had happened on Monday night.

“Where?” a woman in a silver minidress and green body makeup asked.

“West of Roswell. Just outside Hondo, near those big red-rock buttes,” one of the T-shirt guys said.

“I don’t remember any red-rock buttes near Hondo,” the green woman said.

“I don’t know, that’s just what they said. It was on UfosAreRealdotnet.”

Francie texted Serena again, checked the other luggage carousels, and then walked outside to see if she might be waiting in her car.

She wasn’t. Francie went back inside to the baggage carousel in case she’d missed her somehow, checked her texts, and then called Serena. “Where are you?” she said when Serena answered.

“In Roswell,” Serena said, sounding harried. “I’m so sorry about this. I intended to be there to meet you, but we’ve had all kinds of problems, and I still have to pick up your dress, and it’s a complete zoo here with the festival and the town getting ready for the Fourth of July and everything, so I asked Russell’s best man to pick you up. His name’s Larry. He’s perfect for you.”

I doubt that, Francie thought. Serena’s taste in guys for Francie was as bad as her own choices in boyfriends. At her almost-wedding to the stormchaser, she’d tried to fix Francie up with a ghosthunter who spent his time in ghost towns with an EMF detector, looking for the ghosts of outlaws and claiming he’d collected their ectoplasm. Which was why Francie had been so desperate to bring a plus-one with her.

“Larry’s totally hot,” Serena was saying. “He’s six foot two and really interesting to talk to. He’s had three close encounters and been abducted twice. He wrote a book about it—The Survivor’s Guide to Alien Abduction.

“So where’s he supposed to meet me?” Francie said, scanning the baggage claim for someone tall, dark, and handsome, but the only people waiting for their luggage were three teenagers in Star Trek uniforms and Spock ears. “He wasn’t abducted again, was he?”

“No,” Serena said, “but there was a possible sighting two nights ago that he had to go check out.”

Oh my God, I am so glad Graham and Ted refused to come, Francie thought. I would never hear the end of it.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0BGN2XYLY
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Del Rey (June 27, 2023)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ June 27, 2023
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 2030 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 404 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0593499875

Best Sellers Rank: #135,886 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #149 in Humorous Science Fiction (Kindle Store)
- #400 in Humorous Science Fiction (Books)
- #697 in Alien Invasion Science Fiction

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4.3 839 ratings

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Connie Willis

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Constance Elaine Trimmer Willis has won, among other accolades, ten HUGO Awards and six NEBULA Awards for her writing, and was recently named an SFWA Grand Master. She lives in Greeley, Colorado with her husband Courtney Willis, a professor of physics at the University of Northern Colorado.

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Random Chronicler

Silly fun? YES YES YES

Reviewed in the United States on February 25, 2024

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Connie Willis writes two different kinds of books: Serious ones (and there's a continuum here, from the gut punch of Doomsday Book to the full emotional range of Black Out/All Clear) and what I like to think of as Shenanigan Romps (from the nonsensical but fun Bellwether to the situational humor of To Say Nothing of the Dog). This book is firmly in the latter category, and on the sillier end of the spectrum, and was a sheer delight to read.

We begin with a serious-minded main character, Francie, who has traveled to Roswell, New Mexico, for her former college roommate's alien-themed wedding. Francie has donned her neon-green Maid of Honor dress and gone to nab something from her roommate's car when she gets not "abducted," but carjacked by an alien that looks like a tentacled tumbleweed. Shenanigans ensue from there--more abductions, a bigger boat, movie references galore (especially Westerns--phew, Ms. Willis must have watched them all more times than I care to imagine), characters with secrets, a visit to Las Vegas (complete with casino and wedding chapel), poor impulse control, English lessons, and a bit of romance along the way.

It was a fun read throughout, with several laugh-out-loud moments and a lot of sheer goofiness. It lagged a little in the middle, as many books do, and the romance element needed a bit more of a foundation to build on when the time came. Some plot points in the climax of the story didn't fully make sense to me, but by that point, I was so invested I didn't really care. (And watch out for a very abrupt ending.)

But you'll fall in love with Indy no matter what. Should you read it? If you want any or all of the aforementioned, then YES YES YES.

5 people found this helpful

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Mary C.

Pure Fun

Reviewed in the United States on March 30, 2024

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Although Connie Willis’s “heavier” books like Blackout/All Clear and The Doomsday Book are my absolute 5-Star favorites, I love her lighter screwball comedy books, too. “Road to Roswell” is a 4.5 star for me— madcap situation, outlandish characters, and some light romance along the way. My only quibble is that the ending seemed abrupt. I expected at least a few more pages. But, maybe that means a sequel!

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Portista

Connie Willis meets Space Aliens!

Reviewed in the United States on June 28, 2023

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Connie Willis is amazing, whether what she’s writing is dark (her amazing Doomsday Book) or charmingly silly, like The Road to Roswell.

Roswell, of course, refers to the New Mexico town near where the Air Force’s secret weather balloons came down in 1947, or if you believe in space aliens and government conspiracies, where an alien ship crashed and the bodies of three aliens were smuggled off to be autopsied by the government.

The book opens with Francie, a normal young woman from Boston, flying to New Mexico to preferably talk her old college roommate out of marrying a UFO conspiracy nut or, if failing that, to be her maid of honor.

Instead, she finds herself abducted by what appears at first to be a tumbleweed, that she’s forced to drive out of tow. All she can imagine is that she’s going to end up poked and rudely prodded on the mothership she didn’t believe in half an hour earlier, particularly since the tumbleweed/alien has used its elongated tentacles to lash her hands to the steering wheel and feet to the pedals. The only means that the tumbleweed/alien has to communicate is by tapping the windshield and pointing directions to drive.

She may be the first person the tumbleweed/alien captures, but she’ll soon be joined by four other disparate characters, all as the tumbleweed/alien searches desperately for something it cannot explain to them.

Highly recommended.

6 people found this helpful

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E.P. McLean

Aliens oh my

Reviewed in the United States on December 27, 2023

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Willis is always worth reading. This one starts with a great idea. An average woman going to Roswell to attend a wedding of BFF to a UFO believer. Of course, she is abducted by an alien who looks like a tumbleweed. There things begin to break down as seventy percent of the book is a tortured effort to communicate with the alien as he adds to his collection of abductees. Francises connection with Indy the alien lacks clear motivation and the book drags badly until the last third with ends cutely.

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Just another reviewer

An enjoyable science-fiction screwball comedy

Reviewed in the United States on February 3, 2024

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As sometimes is true of this author's novels, this one sometimes felt a big 'drug out," and about a third of the way through, I began to have doubts about it. I was very glad that I stuck it out, however, because it is a real gem of a screwball comedy. Quality light-hearted fare is hard to find in today's world, and the author has done a real service to many of us by writing this fun story.

One person found this helpful

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Weronika

Adorable Alien Mystery!

Reviewed in the United States on June 27, 2023

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Francie Driscoll is on her way to Roswell, New Mexico to attend her best roommate Serena’s wedding. She’s been down this road before and is planning on talking her out of it. Especially when she finds out Serena’s new beau is a UFO enthusiast, the wedding is at the UFO museum and there’s a UFO festival happening at the same time!

By the time Francie gets to Roswell, Serena needs so much help prepping for the wedding because her fiance is raving about a new UFO sighting in the area. Being the best roommate she is, Francie goes out to Serena’s car to pick up decorations but she runs into an alien! A tumbleweed tentacle creature that pins her to the car seat and just points ‘drive’. It’s a close encounter of the fourth kind - abduction!

Now Francie is stuck being a driver for an E.T. and picking up various characters along the way like Wade, a UFO abduction insurance selling conman, Lyle the UFO nut, Eula Mae the gambling granny and Joseph the owner of an RV (“Western wagon”). They get to know and care for the little alien they dubbed Indy and will protect him at all cost from the government and other extraterrestrials.

My favorite parts were when Indy was trying to communicate and I ADORE how they were talking in threes. The relationship Francie had with Indy and then Wade was so sweet. The first half of the book was a bit slow and repetitive, but around the halfway point it really took off and I finished in one sitting.

This was right up my alley, aliens, fun characters and shenanigans. I am the biggest fan of the TV show Roswell (‘99 version) so I couldn’t jump on reading this fast enough. It would be a lie to say I wasn’t planning my trip to Roswell for years now and this road trip novel just might make it happen this year!

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