Chevy in the Hole

Kelsey Ronan's gorgeous, harrowing debut novel follows multiple generations of two families in Flint, Michigan, through the city's notorious growth and decline, with a stunning contemporary love story at its center.

When we meet August "Gus" Molloy on the opening pages of Chevy in the Hole, he's just coming to on the bathroom floor of the Detroit restaurant where he buses after being revived with Narcan. Shortly after, he packs it in and returns to his hometown of Flint for another shot at sobriety. There he meets and falls quickly in love with Monae Livingston, an urban farmer trying to coax a tenuous rebirth from the damaged land. As Gus and Monae begin dreaming up an urban oasis together in Flint, the city's water supply is being quietly poisoned.

Woven throughout their story are the stories of Gus and Monae's families, members of which have had their own triumphs and devastating setbacks trying to survive and thrive in their troubled city. In 1937, Gus's great-grandmother runs supplies to the strikers at Chevrolet while her husband, a luckless salesman, daydreams of riches. Meanwhile, Monae's grandmother, Esther Williams, arrives during the Great Migration to confront the limitations of "GM Crow."

One of Esther's sons finds his political voice in the civil rights movement while another works at the ill-fated theme park AutoWorld. We watch the families brush elbows long before Gus and Monae ever meet, on one now-infamous night, when The Who's Keith Moon drives a Cadillac into the swimming pool of the Holiday Inn.

An unforgettable novel about love and betrayal, race and family, Chevy in the Hole is ultimately a love letter to Flint, and the resilience of its people. Throughout, the city reverberates through these families and friendships, which remind us again and again what people need from each other and from the city that they call home.