Tim Bryant’s new novel, The Stained Glass Mustang, is a captivating tale of wrong actions leading to unimaginable loss and the bumpy road to redemption. The accident happens, irreversibly, in an alcohol-blurred moment. From there we’re with the guilty driver John, a once successful PR and marketing specialist, as he struggles to reconcile his old life with the new, disgraced version of himself. The contest unfolds against vivid imagery of Charleston and surrounding areas, a place Bryant knows well, using threads of various colors to weave a tapestry of light and shadow, good and evil, and multifaceted love when viewed from a distance.
At the heart of the Charleston descriptions are the rivers, Ashley and Cooper, whose confluence form Charleston Harbor. John’s world, before the tragedy, was on the swanky, upmarket Ashley side. Now that he’s “bankrupt in all ways: money . . . love . . . soul,” he has been reassigned by fate to the Cooper marina, “where there would be no more full-service amenities.” John once owned a sleek yacht that he docked at the Ashley Marina. Now he lives aboard his ketch, docked in murky water where at low tide there’s a stench in the air along with the constant din of nearby workers welding and banging to repair old cargo ships. He once drove a freshly waxed company-leased Range Rover. Now his battered old pickup sits in the gravel parking lot of the low-rent Marina.
His wife Cathy has divorced him, and his daughter Janelle will have nothing to do with her dishonored dad, unwilling to reach through the dark cloud that surrounds him. In order to feed himself and pay for his slip at the marina, he is forced to write press releases and internet promotions for a lecherous shyster named Big Al, the only client he can secure at this low point. Big Al is demanding, and John finds himself increasingly at his beck and call. This unsavory relationship adds to John’s burden of guilt and depression.
This story rides along dark currents, but comic relief abounds. Big Al and his “team” are the source of many chuckles. His business is discount auto parts and accessories, most of them cheap Chinese knockoffs. John’s role as Al’s marketing specialist, becomes complicated when John inherits an elaborately painted Mustang from his father, from whom he has been estranged for years. The car’s paint job, inexplicably layered in vibrant colors in the style of the Mexican muralist movement, is “now covered in Chicano street art, scenes from church windows, a graffiti-like rendition of the life of Jesus: Da Vinci’s The Last Supper, Michaelangelo’s The Creation of Adam, Raphael’s The Transfiguration, and Jacapo Pontormo’s The Deposition from the Cross. These and more as if in a Mexican barrio—bright, ostentatious, mystical.” When Big Al sees the car, he is awestruck, and the wheels of his diabolical mind begin to spin.
He offers to pay John handsomely for the use of the grandiose vehicle as an attraction at Race-O-Rama, a local track that serves as a poor man’s training ground for NASCAR wannabes whose race cars are held together with baling wire and Big Al’s cheap parts. The spectators include unsavory characters from the bottom rungs of the socio-economic ladder, along with many folk of Hispanic origins, the perfect audience for the resplendent and spiritually imbued Mustang.
Despondent John reluctantly does Big Al’s bidding, hawking his inferior merchandise to the crowds that are drawn to the enigmatic allure of the Mustang with all its religious symbolism. As a profitable pattern begins to develop, John meets Maria, a beautiful Hispanic woman who seems out of place at Race-O-Rama. Weeks roll by and the car becomes a legend. Money rolls in, but slowly, through his association with Maria, John’s perspective begins a radical realignment.
The heart of this book is, indeed, Bryant’s captivatingly nuanced portrayal of Maria, and the obstacle-filled unfolding of John’s relationship with her.
Maria despises Big Al and his duplicitous marketing ploys. She is an artistic, spiritual woman dedicated to good deeds, and wise beyond her years. What begins as an unlikely friendship blossoms into a love story wherein John realizes he must change his ways in order to be worthy of Maria’s affection. She encourages him, pointing out the obvious in a way that allows him to see the fault lines of his crumbling life, and she also sees the spiritual significance of the Mustang and the immoral way in which Big Al and John are profiting from its misuse. The heart of this book is, indeed, Bryant’s captivatingly nuanced portrayal of Maria, and the obstacle-filled unfolding of John’s relationship with her.
With its passionate heart, the story’s propulsion—the wind in its sails—comes via wind in the sails. John loves sailing, and Tim Bryant displays both his writing chops and knowledge when he writes about the subject. This passage describes the experience of John’s friend Richard the first time John takes him out for a lesson:
“He [cut the engine] and then the magic happened as it always does for newbies, the obnoxious motor racket suddenly replaced by a bewitching rush of sensations: sounds of water rushing along the hull, water gurgling off the rudder, lines straining, basket of fruit hanging in the galley creak-creak-creaking back and forth, back and forth, full sails filling the sky, breezes brushing his face silk-like, sea and sky combined into an enormous tranquility mesmerizing Richard, changing his life forever.”
As Richard’s perspective changes through sailing, John’s spirit becomes reinvigorated as he realizes anew life’s beauty, endless potential, and his sense of purpose. His friendships deepen as does his relationship with Maria and her young son. When he meets his ex-wife Cathy for dinner to discuss, among other things, their daughter, who is now estranged from both of them, she offers a pearl of encouragement to the man she once loved, before the unspeakable tragedy that broke their lives apart: “I think there’s a lot still out there waiting for you to find it.”
John has sailed across dark currents that nearly capsized him, but he is still upright, heading into a new life with his compass pointed toward love and forgiveness. In this complex novel Bryant has employed a range of outcomes, symbols, and correlatives, along with a rich cast of characters, to show how bleak circumstances and myriad setbacks can work together for good. The reader, having embarked on this journey with John, will be uplifted and satisfied when it comes to an end, but nevertheless wanting more—not because anything is lacking but because it is that good.
Ron Yates, Author 