Checking Out

Set in a small southern town during the heart of the Reagan presidency, the poems in Tim Peeler's Checking Out form a narrative arc that follows the fortunes of a young motel desk clerk and his fellow employees. The motor lodge, once the eastern boundary of the town, now exists in a swirl of economic development. As a result, much of the action occurs in the ambiguous area where unstated traditions and social change collide. Idealistic and less than a year out of college, the young clerk encounters the best and worst of humanity.