NMG Network

Beau Flemister

Softcover, 301 pp.

Who do you trust your "baby" with? In the Seat of a Stranger's Car is a vibrant comedy that looks under the hood at the entourage of working-class misfits you leave your car with every day. Set in the bubbling ethnic melting pot of Hawai'i, by day, the pseudo-intellectual protagonist is a struggling writer who teaches at a renowned prep school. By night, he is a full-time valet, surrounded by a lewd yet lovable cast of coworkers who challenge his misplaced sense of entitlement. 

The gang's service industry stasis is quickly shattered when they discover a young boy in the trunk of a deserted vehicle in the hotel parking lot. Afraid of surrendering the abandoned child to foster care, the valets decide to raise the child as their own--a task that proves both absurd and transformative. 

Juggling jobs and a budding romance with a late-night flowergirl, the narrator finds himself on a journey around the island to uncover the boy's mysterious past but unearths something much more meaningful in the process: himself.