The Right Man for the Job

Gunnar and Dewy are "repo" men - one white, one black - who work in a tough, inner-city neighborhood for a furniture and appliance rental company. Dewy, a foul-mouthed realist, happily takes Gunnar under his wing and tries to teach him how to maneuver safely though the dangers of the Columbus, Ohio streets. But Gunnar, fresh from the Wisconsin farmland misses the countryside and lacks the heart for his job. At night he returns home to an increasingly miserable relationship with his girlfriend, Margaret, a former drug dealer with a trust fund and a ten-year-old son, who has moved to the city with Gunnar to study at the university. Both were hoping for a new start, but their lives have only gotten worse. To escape his escalating arguments with Margaret, Gunnar begins to spend more time on the job with Dewy. Together they devise increasingly ingenious ways to reclaim property from their most recalcitrant customers. They become fixated in particular on a woman who will not respond to any of their attempts to repossess her furniture. Both Dewy and the customer refuse to give in. And thus the stage is set for a series of events that send Gunnar's life spiraling further out of control.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction, Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.