Connie Willis is a master storyteller with numerous Hugo and Nebula Awards under her belt. She excels at brilliant, frantic science fiction stories that manage to be closely personal and engaging, while somehow still ending up as world-saving adventures.

Francie is a typical Connie Willis heroine. She is ordinary, smart and well-meaning, with a huge measure of sardonic practicality, just like her author. She arrives at her best friend’s wedding during a festival at the UFO Museum in Roswell, New Mexico. Her goal is to stop her best friend from once again making a bad marriage decision. She ends up being abducted by an alien while wearing a neon-green, glow-in-the-dark bridesmaid’s dress. It’s not her fault. Really. Francie is the only person in the book who is exactly what she seems.

The abduction quickly goes astray, turning into a chaotic and hilarious road trip, as the alien (literally) ropes in more people, each more eclectic and unexpected. Many of them are obviously well-versed in the lore surrounding UFOs and abductions, though Willis of course turns their information completely sideways. The growing group has to evade UFO nuts and tourists and traffic cops and Men in Black and (maybe) other aliens. They are never entirely sure what they are doing. Or exactly why.

In the end, though, on The Road to Roswell, knowing everything about science fictional UFO tropes is not as nearly as useful as kindness and a full working knowledge of 1950s cowboy movies. They’re a great way to learn to communicate, you see, and the alien has a thing for Monument Valley . . . It’s best to just run with it. The book is tons of fun—Connie Willis at her best.