Ralph Bland's thirteenth novel, Fast Car, is the story of the friendship shared between an older man in his fifties and a young man closing fast on his thirties in current day Nashville, Tennessee. The two meet while working as automobile mechanics for an elite foreign car repair shop that caters mostly to the wealthy; the younger, Leonard Wright, is the nephew of the owner and a recent rehabilitation graduate from a bout with drugs and theft of company funds from his previous place of employment, and the elder, Sam Thornton, is an ex-con from peddling drugs back in his college days and the owner of a battered 1965 Sunbeam Tiger that has seen better days but is his lifetime pride and joy, having inherited it as a young boy after his father's death. Leonard takes a job with his uncle as a means of finding himself a better standing and an escape from his failed former existence, while Sam arrives under mysterious circumstances to work at John Wright's business as an elite mechanic with a special know-how of repairing expensive foreign cars.
Fast Car is the story of two men and a car that once was a classic, and how sometimes portions and sections of hopes and wishes have to be sorted through and decided upon to discover which to keep and which to let go. It is a coming-of-age story and a study of class differences, romance, and the inevitable abandonment of dreams.
Ralph Bland is the author of thirteen novels and three collections of short stories and novellas. He is a graduate of Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, and lives with his wife, dogs, his Frank Sinatra music collection, and an eccentric MG on the outskirts of Music City, USA.
