Review by Emily Webber
Hotel Impala, Pat Spears’s third novel, tackles a trio of American catastrophes—mental illness, addiction, and homelessness. Her work typically features characters on the margins of society, who many would label as failures and deadbeats, always presented with care, humor, and hard truths. This novel, layered with many different perspectives, shows the complex web mental illness creates over six-year period in the Killian family. The rhythm of the family, whether things are good or bad, is dictated entirely by Leah, who is mentally ill and experiencing psychotic episodes. Her husband, Daniel, struggles to keep up the facade of a typical family along with their two daughters.
The shifting point of view makes Spears’s novel especially powerful and allows the reader to see the impact of mental illness and addiction on the entire family. When Leah is not on medication, she is impulsive and destructive. She’s terrified of spending time in a mental health facility and doesn’t trust the doctors. During one of her episodes, she effectively eliminates her only guardrail by getting a restraining order against Daniel. He’s removed from the home and can’t see her or the children, ultimately resulting in Leah, Grace, and Zoey becoming homeless, their whereabouts unknown to their family. Daniel uses alcohol to cope, trying to figure out how to save his family and shut out hisguilt over wanting a fulfilling relationship of his own. Leah’s sister, like everyone else, agonizes over the right thing to do to help.
Everyone dutifully acquiesced to Mom’s distorted version of the truth, and they had always returned to presenting themselves to teachers, neighbors, and random strangers as a normal family. But without Dad, Mom’s revised family portrait, with herself as a dutiful mom to her two happy daughters, was skewed. Because although Dad was not the parent who brought home the larger paycheck, it was he, not Mom, who was the glue that held their family together.
Grace, the older child who is forced to act like an adult, wants to remain loyal to her mother yet desires to reclaim her childhood and feel safe. Grace embodies steadfast resilience and hope as she makes hard choices. Her decision to finally give up their location to her dad while they are homeless, partly initiated by a friendship she develops with another girl, Luna, in a similar situation, sets in motion her path to a life lived on her terms.
Luna smiled and for the first time Grace could remember, she felt someone was looking out for her. She handed her the phone and said what she’d imagined never saying. “I think I love you, Luna Garcia.”
“Oh yeah? You sure you ain’t just being grateful?”
“That, too.” Grace answered and when Luna smiled, Grace felt something pass between them; a deeper feeling new to her, but welcome.
Later, Grace tries to honor her promise to come back and rescue Luna. But as Grace knows from her mother, no matter how much you want to make good, sometimes it is impossible.
The only real help for the Killian family comes from the compassion strangers show, other people on the streets, and a dogged determination from family members to keep trying despite the odds. This shows the very isolating effect of mental illness and addiction. Spears also gives voice to characters more on the periphery of the Killian’s world—a cop and her wife who both have encounters with the Killian family and ultimately help solely out of compassion, which changes the Killian’s trajectory.
There’s no fancy prose in Hotel Impala. Instead, Spears presents these people as they are, her skillfully crafter characters move the story forward. The reader will come to care for them and think more deeply about the circumstances the characters find themselves in and our response as a society. While Spears mostly resolves the Killian’s story, as with many in situations of homelessness and addiction, sometimes people are lost, and their stories remain unknown. In her last lines, Spears nods at this—the story doesn’t end with the plight of the Killian family; it is one unfolding across America.
Hotel Impala by Pat Spears
Twisted Road Publications September 16, 2024
9781940189352
Emily Webber is a reader of all the things hiding out in South Florida with her husband and son. A writer of criticism, fiction, and nonfiction, her work has appeared in the Ploughshares Blog, The Writer, Five Points, Split Lip Magazine, Necessary Fiction, and elsewhere. She’s the author of a chapbook of flash fiction, Macerated. Read more at emilyannwebber.com.