Into the Fire

Billy Coffey’s debut novel Snow Day, published by Hachette Book Group’s FaithWords, is featured this week on the CFBA Tour. A one-day read, this novel qualifies as literary fiction with a down-home southern feel to it.

Snow Day uses the kind of emotional imagery and thoughtful language which causes literary lovers to gather in a collective swoon. Particularly female literary lovers. If you visit Billy’s blog, you will notice the majority of comments are from the feminine gender as are most of the back cover endorsements for the book. This isn’t to suggest that men won’t relate to Billy’s story since it’s told from the first person male’s POV. It is to say that, in my opinion, those men who will read this novel might be classified as the “sensitive” types rather than macho men who seek adventure and action and less self-examination in their novel reading.

Stripped down, Snow Day is a story about a 30-something man who faces a mid-life crisis. He’s nothing like he thought he would be when he projected his future from the limited insights of a high school senior. Although happily married with two young children, a boy and a girl, his dead-end job is on the verge of cutting him and others loose right before Christmas. A snow storm rushes into his small town in Virginia, and he decides to take an “emergency snow day” because he doesn’t want to have to go to the factory to find out he’s being laid off.

More of a character and philosophical study with Christian overtones and/or a devotional-flavored account than a true novel, Billy provides several entertaining and poignant pictures and observations of characters in his little corner of the world while revealing his character’s (Peter Boyd) fears, dissections of personal worth, and the mental avenues he’s traveled to arrive at his assessments of his life along the way.

The story begins at the start of the snow day with the heaviness of potentially losing his job as the catalyst for the soul searching which takes place throughout the day, and it ends with an epilogue which gives the reader a positive conclusion to this man’s journey.

Making honest evaluations of his manly motives and admitting his clumsy mistakes and failures in observations, his endearing character Peter Boyd typifies a relatively young man taking stock of his lifetime achievements and, using a standard invented by others in this world, he comes up pitifully short. Maintaining that small town atmosphere in his adventures and remaining within his emotional landscape throughout his snow day, Peter manages some clarity by the time it’s over.

I can’t help but wonder why FaithWords chose to release Snow Day now when it might’ve been more effectively marketed in mid-to late November and December during the Christmas season (when it actually takes place) for shoppers seeking a quaint little story to give as gifts to those who might read a short novel which is long on thoughtful prose.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0446568260

Father, you know Billy’s heart and soul. Keep leading him forward to the places you have for him to go and supply the stories along the way. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.