The Stopover: Potholes

The Stopover #2

by Peter Thomson

The second volume in the Stopover series. Greg deepens his determination to help Jess and the Whitewater crew and further alienating himself with Bamptonville hierarchy and the local crime boss. Follows on directly from The Stopover: A New Road. Explains the sub-prime mortgage fiasco.

291 pages, Paperback

Published June 2, 2016

Reviews

[Peter Thomson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Potholes follows on from A New Road in the Stopover series. Greg Mitchell is still finding his feet in Bamptonville and working through the animosity he appears to generate among the townspeople. He's learning more and we learn more than he does about the motivations, aspirations and bald ambitions of the big players , and at the other end of the scale, those less able to fend for themselves financially and how they fall prey to predators. The year is 2007, one before the financial crash precipitated by banker, finance house and investor blatant greed and lack of effective control. If you never properly understood the mechanics of the sub-prime mortgage scam before, it is all explained here in simple words as it affects the characters in this story. The author's considerable research is evident and played out in the story's events through its disparate characters. A multiple point of view story, written in the third person that encapsulates much of what is going on in the wider world through the lives of the people of this tiny Plains town in Nebraska. A good read indeed.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though intended for a broader audience, it’s possible this title could play well to elements within the LGBT community as well. The story features two central characters, a smooth, sharp, highly successful businessman, and the seventeen-year-old protégé he chooses to mentor. The boy has no one to look after him, no parents who can afford his college tuition or are central to his life. And he’s being pressured by local lowlifes to sell his body to pay for his college tuition. While he’d rather peel off his own skin than do that, he’s seriously considering it. Life is tough. Greg, meanwhile, the salesman who’s trying to teach him how to make his way through the world without having to sell his body, but instead playing the market and learning a bit about sales, is fighting his own demons. He questions his own motivations for becoming involved with Jess. Is he sexually attracted to him? Is that what the relationship is about? Or is his desire for family and not being alone in the world more the dominant factor? Whatever his feelings, and until he can get them sorted out, he knows that it’s wrong to prey on the boy’s vulnerability. Both men are growing more dependent on one another all the while to fill the voids in their lives. Voids that include emotional neediness and financial codependence.

There were times when I wished their personal drama would take a backseat to the political drama going on in this very corrupt small town. But the more immersed the reader becomes in the sordid, if colorful, types pulling the strings, the sheriff, the mayor, the other figures that comprise the powers that be, the more you realize that as troubled as Greg’s and Jess’s relationship is, it’s at least a venue where the men are well aware of the stakes. Namely developing virtues of courage, heart, and cultivating one’s soul. None of these quests occupy the cultural lowlifes and the even more sinful one percenters in town. For them there is clearly no hope of possibility of redemption.

Maybe the theme of the novel has to do with just how difficult it is to do right by one another in this world. That the devil has a hundred and one ways even to bring good men to their knees, including our heroes. And all the reader has to do is look at the ensemble cast of characters around the two leads to realize that those tempted to take the dark path do lose their souls eventually. Whatever the author’s intent, the books vacillates between the interpersonal drama between the two heroes and the more transpersonal drama unfolding with history and what it means to be alive today in our latest economic and political Dark Ages—which is not too unlike the original Dark Ages in character.

Can a good person make their way in such an evil world? Can he light a path that uplifts others? Or will that dark world engulf him as surely as anyone else who traverses it? This is the driving question propelling you through this latest installment as it did the first book in the series, and as I imagine, it will the last book in the series.

The novel is hard to pin down genre-wise, having, if anything, a bit of a literary feel to it. Perhaps “psychological thriller” might apply considering the way the two heroes mess with one another’s minds whether meaning to or not, and the mind games being played on both of them by the corrupt small town crime lords.

Note: I received a free ARC of this novel in paperback form for the purposes of a fair and unbiased review.

[Elizabeth Nixon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the second novel in The Stopover series and follows on immediately from the first, A New Road. Whilst you would be better off reading book 1 before this one, there is a very useful summary included (and a taster of book 3 at the end too). This instalment continues the story of Greg Mitchell, an Englishman who finds himself in Nebraska following a nasty divorce. Potholes concentrates more on unfairness and the danger of gossip. Peter Thomson is a great story teller and writes beautifully. I am very much looking forward to book 3 in the series.