A gorgeous, unflinching love letter to Flint, Michigan, and the resilience of its people, Kelsey Ronan's Chevy in the Hole follows multiple generations of two families making their homes there, with a stunning contemporary love story at its center. In the opening pages of Chevy in the Hole, August “Gus” Molloy has just overdosed in a bathroom stall of the Detroit farm-to-table restaurant where he works. Shortly after, he packs it in and returns home to his family in Flint. This latest slip and recommitment to sobriety doesn’t feel too terribly different from the others, until Gus meets Monae, an urban farmer trying to coax a tenuous rebirth from the city’s damaged land. Through her eyes, he sees what might be possible in a city everyone else seems to have forgotten or, worse, given up on. But as they begin dreaming up an oasis together, even the most essential resources can’t be counted on. Woven throughout their story are the stories of their families—Gus’s white and Monae’s Black—members of which have had their own triumphs and devastating setbacks trying to survive and thrive in Flint. A novel about the things that change over time and the things that don’t, Chevy in the Hole reminds us again and again what people need from one another and from the city they call home. A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt and Company.
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“Reveals a decaying city once at the heart of America’s industrial and cultural identity. The intimate histories in this stunning and masterful debut reveal universal truths of renewal and redemption at individual and societal levels.”
— Booklist (starred review)
“Ronan has a gift for propulsive sentences that make even his deeply interior moments somehow suspenseful and endearing.”
— New York Times Book Review“[Chevy in the Hole] does a great job at exploring Flint’s very real history of environmental racism…Ronan has not only done her research but has crafted this love letter to Flint with compassion.”
— Detroit Metro Times“A smart Rust Belt love story informed by its location’s complex history.”
— Kirkus ReviewsBe the first to write a review about this audiobook!
Kelsey Ronan grew up in Flint, Michigan. Her work has appeared in Lit Hub, Michigan Quarterly Review, the Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. She teaches for InsideOut Literary Arts.
Janina Edwards, an Earphones Award–winning narrator, is a native of Chicago and a graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts acting program. Her 2016 performance of Voice of Freedom was a finalist for the Audie Award.