ALISON’S AUTOMOTIVE REPAIR MANUAL

A widow repairs an old car in order to mend her broken life.

Alison, the heart of Barkley’s second novel (after Money, Love, 2000), has been without her husband for some two years now. Since he died, she’s been living with her quick-to-criticize sister Sarah and studiously avoiding anything like a life in her small West Virginia town. Once a teacher at the local college, she hasn’t wanted anything to do with that part of her past for quite some time. At the outset, she’s decided to take on a project: restoring the rust-eaten 1976 Corvette that’s wearing grooves in the floor of her husband’s garage. A child of the suburbs (her husband took care of all things mechanical), Alison has no skills or training for the job—just time and determination. So she gets a repair manual, starts maxing out her credit cards at the auto-parts store (run by a friendly preacher who likes to include hellfire-and-brimstone pamphlets with all purchases), and getting to work. The subplot involves Alison’s friendship with Gordon Kesler, an old man who plays records for the dance lessons that Sarah runs out of her house. Gordon, a trivia buff and great teller of lies, introduces Alison to his son, Max, who works in demolitions, blowing up old silos and the like. Alison starts up a fitful romance with Max, a surprisingly sensitive and articulate guy for someone who spends his time playing around with dynamite. An unfortunate branch of the subplot follows the draining of the lake near the town, which everyone thinks will uncover the car that, legend has it, Gordon drove across the ice years ago and that fell through, almost taking him with it. The water is drained, truth uncovered, etc. Because it’s just that kind of book, Alison’s car repair takes on über-symbolic significance as, through it, she learns how to live again.

Well-crafted, warmly treated—and unforgivably meek.