Intersection: A Trucker's Christmas Carol

by Christopher Farris

It’s two days before Christmas and Granny is miserable. Former truck driver turned successful businessman, Granny, owns all four corners of a Midwestern interstate intersection. From an office over Granny’s Truck stop he oversees Granny’s Motel, Granny’s Saloon, and Granny’s Fudge Facktory.

He’s rich, powerful and, just lately, looking for happiness in a bottle. His wife, Honey, is convinced that he’s left her. His best friend, Billy, thinks he watches too much liberal TV. His daughter has accused him of having an existential crisis. Granny’s prepared to admit something is wrong, but he can’t quite put his finger on it. If only he knew what existential meant.

Now, a dangerous man from his past has resurfaced after twenty years. His business is missing half-a-million dollars and a snake-handling nut job is creating chaos everywhere he appears.

Over the next three days, Granny is going to have to face his criminal past, his unhappy present and an uncertain future, all while keeping his businesses running and dealing with an eccentric and demanding cast of intersection residents.

What’s an old ex-truck driver to do?

It’s going to be an interesting Christmas at Granny’s.

301 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 26, 2021

Reviews

[Kay · Rating 5 out of 5]

In that it both illuminates and delights, Intersection: A Trucker’s Christmas Carol follows the trusty method of great writers like Charles Dickens, whose classic Christmas tale Farris signals in the title. The story pulls us in, amuses us with off-the-wall antics of unconventional characters who begin broken but, surprisingly, end up whole. Whether Granny, the boozy, guilt-ridden, owner of four businesses in the middle of nowhere, or his pestering wife Honey, or his decidedly “un-woke” sidekick Billy, we come to see them all as authentic and complete, regardless of their apparent lack of sophistication. Farris accomplishes this by extracting their integrity, showing us who they really are. So, in coming to comprehend these ostensibly benighted individuals, we wake up a little ourselves, drift a little closer to the insight we think or hope we have. This feature of Intersection is what most impresses me, though the novel has many other pleasing attributes. The description is exceptional; the plot by which the protagonist pulls himself out of an untenable situation is clever and unpredictable. The relationships that form, fall apart, and re-solidify are endearing in the basic, human benevolence they display. Moreover, Farris’s second novel, quite different from his first The Fountain, establishes the flexibility of a relatively new author, who finds any number of ways to delight and uplift his audience.