Kelsey Ronan

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.

A Novel

Chevy in the Hole

Hosanna Patience

Urbantasm: The Spring Storm is the fourth and final book in the magical teen noir serial novel inspired by the author's experiences growing up in and around Flint, Michigan. The stage has been set. The chessboard awaits. Against a background of love and friendship, of hard-won grades and groundbreaking plays, John and his friends are ready to claim their lives, their futures, and their city. They have identified their adversary: a mysterious man who calls himself "God" and manipulates the Chalks street gang through the influence of his children. John has also unlocked the secret of O-Sugar, an otherworldly drug with the ability to distort space. But God wields a powerful influence throughout the city of Akawe, and nobody seems to understand his true motives or intentions. As the ice and frost of a long and unrelenting winter finally crack under cold, torrential rains, frozen things begin to stir again. The brutal murder of one of John's friends and the abrupt disappearance of another signals that the moment of action has arrived. Who will survive this dying city, and how will the experience change the survivors? Akawe has been unstable for decades. A bit of lift and heat and moisture is all it needs to build a spring storm.

Urbantasm: The Spring Storm

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Finalist for the 2022 Heartland Booksellers Award 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.

Kelsey Ronan’s gorgeous, harrowing debut novel Chevy in the Hole 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...

Kelsey Ronan

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