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Lott delves deeply into the recollections of a life that is both stirring and startling. As this enlivening tale unfolds, its central character and the book's narrator, a young man known as PO Boy, is experiencing reasonable security in a rough section of Atlanta, Georgia, in 2014. He has regular employment and the comfortable aspects of sharing an apartment with an energetic female partner. His communication with family and friends is always active, mainly via phone, as well as through Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. One day, though, these circumstances will be radically altered.
While cheerfully chatting with his disabled brother as they cruise their childhood haunts, PO Boy sees a shootout flaring nearby. The heavy gunfire puts him in increasing danger, and fearing for his life, he runs for cover, then falls and seriously injures his knee. During his hospital treatment, he starts to have strange, seemingly psychic revelations, allowing him to establish numerous contacts by sending out web messages containing sentences ending with three dots, signifying his location in Atlanta's Zone Three. But this coded outreach has negative consequences, as he realizes that his most intimate life occurrences are now being filmed through this medium. Fortunately, however, despite this undeniably eerie effect, positives include direct conversation with famous musicians. As well, television newscasters suddenly seem to recognize and speak to him, using the signal number three to prove the reality of their connection. Overwhelmed, PO Boy loses his job. He flies to Las Vegas to seek adventure, finds the atmosphere daunting, and graciously passes along a newfound job to someone in more dire circumstances than he. Back in Atlanta, he is homeless, jobless, and, owing to difficult, unpreventable circumstances, incarcerated. Yet he remains in etheric touch with friends and celebrities. A popular football star, appearing on TV as PO Boy watches from his prison cell, sends a "three."
As Lott deftly draws this portrait, his hero is presented as an innocent observer of the roiling changes in his life, calmly accepting homelessness, job losses, and imprisonment. Throughout, he portrays PO Boy as bravely facing the many upheavals that beset him, rising above his limitations, and even able to communicate with highly placed government officials. In this engaging work, the author clearly establishes his talents as a determined wordsmith, focusing intently on the ways that harsh conditions may result in undeservedly negative happenings, yet may be overcome. He consistently presents his protagonist as a strong, indeed admirable personality, someone able to survive and move beyond multiple mishaps. His narrative blooms from the outset owing to Lott's skillful use of parlance, utilizing a stirring, credible vernacular expertly melding PO Boy's street smarts with his humor, enthusiasm, and intensive, sensitive inner longings. Lott offers his hero's private, idealistic musings as a persistent factor despite major setbacks, as when, faced with a prison sentence, PO Boy resolves to "prepare for the worst and hope for the best." Lott's dynamic depiction of a young man possessing an indomitable human spirit will doubtless serve as inspiration for a wide and varied readership.
RECOMMENDED by the US Review