"You're Invited!" A Review of a New Novel

by Pa Rock
Reader

You’re Invited!  is a work of fiction that grew out of a very real and tragic event:  the 2011 massive tornado that wiped out a good portion of Joplin, Missouri.  The setting for the story is Neosho, a small Ozark community located twenty miles south of Joplin.   The novel’s author is Tim Macy, a young writer of promise who grew up in southwest Missouri and spent several years of his boyhood in Neosho.

Tim Macy is also my son, a successful screenwriter who has one feature film to his credit, The Brass Teapot, a second scheduled for production beginning next month, and a third in an early phase of pre-production.  In Tim’s “spare” time he is a devoted husband and father as well as a part-time college instructor.  He has also completed one other novel which has yet to be published.

You’re Invited!  tells the story of Barry Mayhew, a former member of the Neosho City Council who is about to begin serving a prison term for stealing money from a fund set up to benefit victims of the Joplin tornado.  As Barry tries to come to terms with his rapidly approaching incarceration and the impending long-term separation from his young son, an event from his past suddenly re-emerges that begins to play even more havoc with his life.

This book will stir memories for anyone who has lived in or around Neosho.   The author has captured the town’s authenticity replete with the hard edges and sharp corners of life in a small community, yet as with all things based in memory, it has been air-brushed with just a hint of nostalgia.    All in all, the book presents a startlingly good composite of the town Tim knew as a boy. 

But it is psychological distress of Barry Mayhew that is the true and necessary focus of this book.  The plot is highly original, exerting a force that destabilizes that main character’s once successful life and sets it spinning out onto the darkening horizon, much like the murderous twister that spawned the tale.

You’re Invited! is being published electronically by Amazon.com.   To read it free, or to order a copy for your Kindle for just $2.99, please visit the following link.

http://www.amazon.com/YOURE-INVITED-Tim-Macy-ebook/dp/B0106TCKFC/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1435420229&sr=8-4&keywords=you%27re+invited

I wouldn’t recommend it if I didn’t like it – regardless of who the author is.

Great work, Tim!