Book Review: Snow Day, by Billy Coffey

I was alerted to Billy Coffey by a tweet from Karen Spears Zacharias earlier this year. He's a blogger who has a day job and lives in Virginia, and has just published his first book, Snow Day. After reading several of his blog posts, I was intrigued by the book and had meant to purchase it. As it turns out, I won a free copy in a promotion by the publisher. I am under no obligation to give any review, positive or negative, about Snow Day.

Having said that, I'm recommending Snow Day very highly. This is a story about a man named Peter whose circumstances are similar to that of Mr Coffey (mid-30's, wife and two kids, one with diabetes, factory job), with some differences. In particular, Peter is facing a very tough situation: an impending layoff in a small town with little in the way of alternatives for him if he should lose his job.

Snow Day takes place in one day: a winter day in which the protagonist decides to take a day off. He spends the day running errands at the store, meeting interesting people, watching local kids sledding, and thinking about people and life in this small town. The gray cloud looming over all these thoughts and encounters is the sobering prospect of joblessness.

There's not a lot of plot to get in the way of the story, and that's a good thing in this case. It's a simple account of one man's thoughts and attempts to keep his chin up as he faces not being able to provide for his family. Along the way, he meets several characters, and learns a lesson from each one. My favorite is chapter 4, where Peter mocks an imperfect toy Santa, only to learn that this world is full of imperfect people, each of whom has value.

If you're up for a nice story which teaches some things without being preachy, and which is hopeful in the midst of hopelessness, I recommend Snow Day.

Comments

Saying goodbye to one set of twins, and hello to another

"It's been ten whole years already? Wow! Hard to believe." Many a father will say something like that while shaking his head in disbelief, when his oldest approaches the 10th birthday. It's a milestone, not just for the kid, but for the parents. It's a head-shaker because I am reminded that on that day, 10 years ago, my life changed forever. In some ways, it has passed very quickly. In other ways, it seems like it's been every bit of ten years. There are two distinct things, though, about the ten-year anniversary of my dadhood. The first is that I became a father of not one, but two little bundles of joy that Tuesday morning. Abby was born at 8:48, followed by her brother Jacob at 8:50. The second is that their birth marked some rare joy in the midst of the darkest day in our nation's history. As my wife was in labor, a nurse came in and told us that an airplane had crashed into a skyscraper in New York. I turned on the labor room...

Embarrassing video clip--John Cougar

I recently stumbled across some Youtube gold: a live performance by John Mellencamp when he was Johnny Cougar. He appears to be have been about 23, and he's singing "Ain't even Done With The Night", in front of a fairly unresponsive crowd with Bobby Bare (?!) in the front seat. Cougar/Mellencamp is dressed in a nerdy sweater and generally bears no resemblance to the singer as we knew him just 5 years later. He looks a lot more like Potsie from Happy Days than the guy who sang "Pink Houses". Certainly, there is no way to watch this and make a connection to the guy whose song "This is Our Country" beat us to death by overuse in pickup truck commercials. But the real entertainment value from this clip comes from the guys behind Cougar. In hot-pink tuxedos, there are 5 Pips-like backup dancers/singers who don't sing, but clap their hands real well. They essentially spend the entire song performing cheerleader dance routines not unlike those ...

The Two Christmases

As I walked through the front door of the Post Office to make my stamp purchase, I was faced with a choice. On my left was a vending machine, and to my right was the customer service desk, where I could make the purchase from actual human beings. Because there was no line at the moment, I chose the human interaction. I strolled up to the middle-aged, slightly balding postal employee, read that his name was "Rex", and I asked for two books of stamps. As it was mid-December, Rex asked me "would you like Christmas stamps, or...". Once I realized he wasn't about to complete the sentence, I looked down and saw that he was holding some very un-Christmas-like stamps bearing images of the Liberty Bell and the word "Forever." Knowing that my wife had planned to mail several Christmas cards, I told him "One of each." To my surprise, the decision-making did not stop there. Rex hit me with a follow-up: he held up two types of stamps: one had a pi...

Middletree

Search This Blog