The Fiction Spot
A snapshot review of a book related to the Non-fiction Feature
Also in this Monthly Bulletin:
The Non-fiction Feature: What the Eyes Don’t See by Mona Hanna-Attisha
The Product Spot: NRDC Guide to Safe Drinking Water
The Pithy Take
“Chevy in the Hole” is Kelsey Ronan’s debut novel, revolving around an uncommon romance between Gus, an NA member struggling through another recommitment to sobriety, and Monae, an urban farmer devoted to the land. As their relationship intensifies, the Flint water crisis builds in the backdrop, and Ronan carefully, without letting it overpower the main story, demonstrates how this monumental environmental disaster seeped into peoples lives, relationships, and dreams.
Gus and Monae’s stories are also intertwined with the stories of their families–whole generations of people surviving, triumphing, failing, and loving Flint. At its core, “Chevy in the Hole” is Ronan’s love letter to Flint, which is also her hometown, and is a warm reminder of community in the darkest times.
By the fall, when Monae was in her second trimester and the farm’s first season was winding down, the state still said the water was fine. But the pediatrician from the city hospital got on the local news and said that children were showing elevated lead levels in their blood…By then Bea could hear her mother’s heartbeat accelerate in panic, absorbed her mother’s cortisol. She could hear her father lamely insisting that they would be fine.
Chevy in the Hole
Author: Kelsey Ronan
Publisher: Henry Holt & Company
304 pages | 2022
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