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Brandon Reads 2023
Brandon Reads is a community-wide book club that encourages the entire township to read together.
Brandon Reads 2023
Brandon Reads is a community-wide book club that encourages the entire township to read one book together.
Read our second annual Brandon Read’s title Chevy in the Hole by Kelsey Ronan, and join us for a handful of events based on the book.
To join the fun, register for the book club below!
We will discuss the book virtually with weekly book club questions on our website, host an in-person book discussion with other readers and invite author Kelsey Ronan to visit with the readers, as well as a program on Flint’s history and a Motown music program!
Chevy in the Hole is a Michigan Notable Book of 2023 portraying “a gorgeous, unflinching love letter to Flint, Michigan, and the resilience of its people, following multiple generations of two families making their homes there, with a stunning contemporary love story at its center.”
Chevy in The Hole by Kelsey Ronan
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.
Events
- Registration Opens: August 21, 2023
- Pick up a copy of the book: October 2023
- Read: October 2023
- Online Book Discussion: Every Friday in October
- In-Person Book Discussion: Nov. 1, 2023, 6:30-7 PM
- Author Talk: Nov. 1, 2023, 7-8 PM
Read Chevy in the Hole
Waiting FOREVER in Libby?
We have a winner! Check back this fall to see what we shall read together!
Brandon Reads – Week 5 Discussion
Why do you think the title of the book is Early Morning Riser? What questions would you want to ask the author of this book?
Recommendations
Book Recommendations
from Katherine Heiny
*Marrying the Ketchups by Jennifer Close
Worldly Things by Michael Kleber-Diggs (we can inter-library loan this title)
Other books I’ve liked recently:
*Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan
+Notes on a Silencing by Lacy Crawford
*Either/Or by Elif Batuman
Books I’ve loved for a long time:
*The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler
+We Need to Talk about Kevin by Lionel Shriver
*Case Histories by Kate Atkinson
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- Shortly after overdosing, August “Gus” Molloy 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.
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- In this young adult romantic comedy, 17-year-old self-professed teen love doctor Prince Jones has his own segment on Detroit’s popular hip-hop show. After meeting Dani, an ambitious writer who hates all things romance, Jones has only three dates to prove to her that he’s worth falling for.
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- A psychological novel about a mother and daughter who, after a lifetime on the run from a dark and dangerous past, land in a small Michigan town that may hold the key to ending their fugitive lifestyle.
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- Against the backdrop of a never-colonized North America, a broken Ojibwe detective embarks on an emotional and twisting journey toward solving two murders, rediscovering family, and finding himself.
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- Norvia grew up on Beaver Island, picking berries, listening to her grand-père’s stories of their Ojibwe ancestors, and finding comfort in the stars up above. Now, at 14, in Boyne City, Michigan, Norvia’s mother is remarrying and forces her to pretend she’s not Native American. When faced with numerous changes and the looming threat of world war in 1914, Norvia must find the courage to reveal who she truly is.
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- Discover the stories of the Gossard Girls, the women who sewed corsets and bras at factories in Ishpeming and Gwinn from the early twentieth century to the 1970s. As the Upper Peninsula’s mining and timber industries became increasingly exhausted, the Gossard Girls’ income sustained both their families and the local economy. Their political and economic strength led a successful four-month strike in the 1940s that capped an eight-year struggle to unionize. Follow the daily challenges and joys of these mostly first- and second-generation immigrant women who also navigated shifting ideas of what single and married women could and should do as workers and citizens.
