Horton Purney

Horton Purney is remembered through Sandy Sarver’s account as a dangerous, exploitative father whose abuse shaped her early life and left lasting associations between travel, sex, and fear. His repeated journeys with her from Barstow to Las Vegas turned an ordinary stretch of highway into part of the violence he inflicted and enabled.

Identity and Background

Purney lived with Sandy in a ramshackle house on the outskirts of Barstow, at the edge of the California desert. Sandy’s mother had died giving birth, leaving father and daughter alone together. Purney is described as moody, brooding, mean, and dangerous; Sandy’s earliest memories included his sexual abuse of her. She escaped from home at fourteen.

Purney also ran a motorcycle repair shop from a sagging, sun-scorched, unpainted barn on the same property as the house. The shop brought in little money, and his treatment of Sandy was bound up with his efforts to make money elsewhere.

Exploitation in Las Vegas

Twice a year, Purney drove Sandy the two and a half hours across the desert to Las Vegas. There he dealt with Samson Cherrik, a pimp who maintained a list of men seeking access to children. After Sandy had spent a few weeks in Las Vegas, Purney packed up and drove her back to Barstow with cash in his pockets.

For Sandy, neither leg of the journey offered safety. The outward drive carried the knowledge of what awaited her; the return meant going back to the house and to Purney’s continuing abuse, not escaping it. The travel was therefore part of a repeated pattern of exploitation, not a passage out of her circumstances.

Lasting Effects and Narrative Significance

The trips made the sounds and sights of driving—an engine’s rumble, tires on pavement, the highway stretching ahead—fearful to Sandy. She later recognized that her aversion to highway travel had roots in these forced journeys, just as she understood her earlier repulsion toward sex in relation to Purney’s abuse.

That history sharpens the significance of Sandy’s later change. Since the summer before last, she has come to relish driving off without a destination, an activity she once dreaded. The novel presents this pleasure alongside her growing sense of self-respect and freedom: the road that Purney had made part of her trauma becomes something Sandy can choose for herself. His presence in the account is thus defined not by a later encounter or an independent change in his circumstances, but by the lasting harm he caused and the contrast between his control and Sandy’s reclaimed agency.