Motel Mount Pleasant, with its drugs, hookers, and a pimp proffering ice cream, is the worst place so far that fourteen-year-old Grace and her little sister Zoey have had to called home. Her mother, Leah, is sinking deeper into madness, and the phone she might have used to call her dad is lost to her.
There was once life on a quiet suburban street, but now there is only a series of seedy motels, homeless shelters, and the back seat of Leah's old Impala. Relying on lies and deception, Grace navigates her dangerous world. She struggles to keep herself and her sister safe, even as she watches her mother being sucked into the vortex of her increasingly horrifying delusions. Leah's seeks primarily to mute the pain of her illness, but she has a plan: she will find the healing power of the magical whooping crane, whose existence was revealed to her by a woman of the streets.
Told in shifting points of view over a period of six years,
Hotel Impala
is a story of a family beleaguered by madness and delusion: The Glass Castle meets The Fisher King.