The strange world of Peter Rock's This Is the Place is the best place a book has taken me in a long time. I wish I could move there. The narrator, an elderly blackjack dealer obsessed by a young Mormon girl named Charlotte, is a seductive storyteller whose words transport the reader to a fantastic liminal space. As he moves back and forth across the material borders of Nevada and Utah in pursuit of Charlotte, he circles some metaphysical borders as well. Caught in the nebulous territory of thresholds--thresholds of morality, depravity, the natural and the supernatural--he does something terrible, and he tells this arresting story to justify himself. --Tina Pohlman Anchor Books Photo Credit: Ella Vining Send us comments