Chevy in the Hole

By Kelsey Ronan,

Book cover of Chevy in the Hole

Book description

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…

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2 authors picked Chevy in the Hole as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Imagine waking up one morning to find brown, evil-smelling water flowing from your taps. This is what happened in Flint, Michigan, one morning in 2014. Some people blamed the residents of Flint for the debacle, but the city manager made the arbitrary decision to tap into the Flint River to save money. It's ironic that within a week, GM hooked themselves back up to the Detroit waterline as the untreated water was ruining their equipment. 

The story follows two families through generations, converging in the present. I found the flashback to the sit-down strike in 1936 at GM in Flint…

It seems society wants either to willfully ignore Flint, Michigan or hold it up as an example of how wrong things can go. Ronan’s novel, set in Flint and Detroit, before and during the Flint water crisis, tells a fully realized story of this city that has so often been mistreated and misrepresented. The novel tells the love story of August, a man brought back to life from an opioid overdose and Monae, a young urban farmer. Both lovers have ties to Flint and Detroit that go back generations and Ronan expertly weaves stories of these family lines and the…

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