“Hotel Impala” (Twisted Road Publications 2024) by award-winning Tallahassee author Pat Spears is a singularly powerful, heart-stopping book about resiliency and survival—and love.
The love that drives the novel involves two sisters, a husband and wife, and a mother and her children. “Hotel Impala” tells a poignant, intense story written with the realism of a memoir, though it is fictional. The novel was released on Sept. 16, and Spears will host a book launch party at My Favorite Books, 1410 Market Street Suite C-2, from 1-3 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 28, which will include food, a reading, and plenty of good conversation.
The nuclear family in “Hotel Impala” has a serious problem. The mother/wife, Leah, is severely mentally ill and the family lacks the financial resources to get her proper help. The chaos created by her illness builds suspense, conflict, and crisis. There are edge-of-your-seat moments of life and death when the two daughters confront evils they are too young and vulnerable to cope with — and their mother is too delusional to help them.
Living with someone with that degree of mental illness creates a maelstrom of not just physical peril, but emotional turmoil for the children and the husband. All that is captured in a haunting, sensitive way in “Hotel Impala.” In a telling exchange, when asked what it is like inside her head, Leah answers “that explaining her illness was like explaining a bark without ever having seen a dog.”
The hapless, overwhelmed but sympathetic husband barely makes a living working as an auto mechanic. He is like “a prisoner whose guard had the authority to shoot him without cause.” Committed to hiding his wife’s condition, he fears losing his daughters to foster care if the true extent of Leah’s mental illness becomes known. As it turns out, keeping Leah’s mental illness hidden might not have been the best decision. Nonetheless, it is a choice motivated by love.
The two daughters are the heart and soul of the novel. Grace is only 12 when the story starts and, six years later as the story concludes, is college-age. Even at her young age, she is driven to care for her mother, promising her mom to never abandon her. At the same time, Grace is equally driven to protect her younger sister, Zoey, who is too young to fend for herself in any meaningful way.
When Leah’s actions cast her and her two daughters out in the world with only the family’s ancient Impala car to sleep in, the father loses track of them. Grace can’t save them from all the horrors and dangers of being homeless. Yet, Grace and Zoey discover they have a certain cunning, driven largely by hunger and fear.
Leah’s descent into a deepening spiral of mental illness might destroy them all. She leads them to a hotel filled with drugs, enslaved and underage hookers, and a pimp plying Zoey with chocolate as she sits on his lap. Seeing clearly how Zoey’s life is endangered by this pimp, Grace must make a desperate choice if she and Zoey are to survive.
The story is strong, but the high quality of the writing makes it even stronger. The empathy author Spears shows her characters adds to its many strengths. Our society’s failure to help provide better for the homeless and the mentally ill and the need to improve upon these failures is a theme carefully and subtly infused through the plot.
Spears is too fine an author to hit readers over the head with her message, but Leah, Grace, and Zoey will guide readers to understand that societal need. All in all, this is a stellar book, wonderfully crafted with a story that needs to be told.
Spears is the award-winning author of two previous novels and numerous short stories. She is a sixth generation Floridian and lives in Tallahassee with her partner, two dogs, and a rabbit. Twisted Road Publishing is Tallahassee-based and is home to several other award-winning authors.
A former Tallahassee resident, Claire Matturro is the author of eight novels and an associate editor at The Southern Literary Review.
If you go
What : Book launch party for "Hotel Impala" will include food, a reading, and plenty of good conversation.
When: 1-3 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 28
Where: My Favorite Books, 1410 Market Street Suite C-2
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Tallahassee author's 'Hotel Impala' paints picture of family dysfunction | Book Review
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