Brian Chapman feels the brunt of the problem as he struggles to keep his family business afloat with diminishing income and the looming financial catastrophe.
It’s 2010 and the world is on the edge of a financial meltdown. Can he survive this most challenging problem of his life or will he lose everything?
Review:
Too Big to Cry is fiction at its most potent, creating an electrical line of high-powered tension that delivers its energy throughout the book. The effects of the story are so profound, because they resonate with owners of small and medium sized businesses today, not only in the UK, but also in America, Australia, and across the world in the aftermath of global recession.
Set in 2010, this story seems straight out of the nightly news media. It is relevant to consumers, job seekers, and small business owners alike. The demise of a single business stemming from customers who are unable to pay their bills removes the livelihood of dozens of people. These newly unemployed will have a hard job of finding other work in the economic downturn. Meanwhile, inside intrigue accelerates the corporate death as embezzlement and disloyalty drain the company assets.
The collapse of each small business and resultant loss of products, services, and jobs might lead to national economic collapse; but what of the business owner and his family?
The home front crumbles into devastation as if from a major earthquake event.
CEO Brian Chapman struggles to maintain his business and family, but tension fills his face and his voice becomes more strident by the day. Employees fairly screech at one another in anticipation of financial breakdown with its possible homelessness and starvation, even in a Western economy. The Apocalypse is coming. The threads of Mrs. Chapman’s sanity begin to unravel.
At the beginning of the book, we see the one influential CEO Chapman reduced to old clothing and a rattletrap car as he drives to the auction of his business assets. Inside, he finds scraps of his former life in photos and clippings fallen beneath furniture. Former employees have been smashing company vehicles in a rage, making threatening phone calls, and attacking his house.
We read the story of the decline of Brian’s family business and gasp at a runaway train of financial ruin that is unstoppable. Banks and other lenders actually fuel the decline of businesses with loan gimmicks. We wonder at these events, know they have occurred in several countries, yet sit in shock, reminded of the swath of their obliteration. Many individuals have committed suicide in the light of financial ruin that destroyed their families and companies. Scores more have become inmates in mental health facilitates, unable to cope with immense losses.
As things fall apart, Brian Chapman takes his dilapidated car and faithful dog on a journey to gain back his losses. He confronts bankers, embezzlers, hostile employees, false friends, and decompensating family members, determined to gain a measure of justice. At least his dog is still by his side and mentally fit, with no evil tricks held in waiting for his master. What man and dog can accomplish together may be surprising.
Too Big to Cry is a roller coaster experience that seems to be all quickly and powerfully downhill from a great height. It is difficult to close the book before reaching the end, because one does not want to be stuck on that sharp slope, but certainly wants to find an upswing and a safe landing. The story is too big and too true not to be read by all of us.
Too Big to Cry is available worldwide from Amazon, Kindle and signed copies in the UK and Europe.
Review by Patty Inglish USA
