The devastating effects of mental illness on a family become appalling clear in talented author Pat Spear’s latest novel, Hotel Impala (Twisted Road 2024). Leah’s drastic mood swings bring complete chaos to the lives of her two children—teenage Grace and grade-schooler Zoey—and her husband Daniel. Chaos is not even the worst result of Leah’s instability. Grace and Zoey confront dangerous situations because Leah is often out of touch with reality.
To Spears’s credit, Leah’s portrayal is nuanced. She is shown to have deep compassion for animals. Also, she offers her children occasional bursts of joy through simple acts like playing in a puddle with them. She loves her children, but unless she takes her medications regularly, she is incapable of meeting even their most basic needs. To cover up for their mother, the children learn to tell lies and keep secrets. Grace notes that their mother condones and encourages their secrecy: “Mom smiled and said, ‘My darling girls, there are no true stories; only those we hold as secrets.’”
The father Daniel works as a car mechanic for low wages that don’t provide enough for all the family’s expenses. Especially when Leah can’t hold a job for long because of her mental state. Or when Daniel has to cough up money for the prescriptions that keep Leah on an even keel. Or if he has to pay hospital bills when she doesn’t take her pills. Or when he loses his own job because of the demands of taking care of his unstable wife. One of Daniel’s greatest flaws is his unwarranted optimism. He can’t face the truth about his wife: that she will likely never get better, no matter how much he loves her. His great strength, however, is an abiding, deep love for the children.
A strong supporting cast of characters round out the book. Aunt Josey takes in her sister Leah and her nieces during desperate times—despite the objections of her husband Robert. Ellie, a compassionate veterinarian, helps Leah give two unadoptable dogs painless deaths. Ellie’s wife Jordan, a police officer, bends the rules at times to help the family out. Daniel’s good friend Sam offers a bed and wise advice as needed. Luna, a tough-as-nails teen, stands ready to defend Grace and Zoey with a baseball bat against Fat Joseph, an evil pimp who exploits young girls.
The realities of homelessness are laid out in chilling detail. The children often go hungry. They are left alone at night in the family car, a beat-up Impala, while their mother works the streets. Unable to afford feminine hygiene products, Grace has to swipe napkins from a fast-food joint to manage her periods. While Spears spins out a story with a healthier, happier outcome for Grace and Zoey than the life they have been living with their mother, they will obviously need extensive therapy to overcome the trauma from years of humiliation and exposure to horrors. The story is all the more distressing when you consider that two and a half million children in the United States are homeless each year. Just like Grace and Zoey.
Hotel Impala is a fine novel about an important subject we all too often turn a blind eye toward. The novel will stick with readers long after they turn the last page. One would expect no less from Pat Spears, an author with impressive works to her name. Spears and Twisted Road Publications are to be commended for bringing the voices of these marginalized unhoused people out into the open where they can be heard by readers like us.
Pat Spears
Pat Spears’s second novel, It’s Not Like I Knew Her won a bronze medal in the 2016 Foreword Review Book of the Year Awards. Her debut novel, Dream Chaser, was released in 2014. She has twice received honorable mention in the Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition. Her short stories have appeared in the North American Review, Appalachian Heritage, Sinister Wisdom, A Multicultural Lesbian Literary & Arts Journal, Seven Hills Review, and anthologies titled Law and Disorder from Main Street Rag, Bridges and Borders from Jane’s Stories Press, Saints and Sinners: New Fiction from the Festival 2012, and Walking the Edge: A Southern Gothic Anthology from Twisted Road Publications. Her short story “Whelping” was a finalist for the Rash Award and appeared in the 2014 issue of Broad River Review.
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