Review: Pawn Your Renoir Here
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 02 8, 2014
Finn Dante is the one Dante son who "made it" out of Dodge.  He went through high school with Jane MacInnee (Janey Mac) but she was told by her parents to stay away from the Dante boys and for the most part, she did.  She goes to college and builds a career afterward as an event manager, a job that needs her energy, problem-solving skills, flair for style and fashion, and her can-do spirit.  Finn tries college for a while, leaves for the army and goes to Afghanistan as a Ranger.  When he returns, he goes in to the family business.The book opens when Finn and Janey meet again, near Reno? (I wish I were more clear on where the book is taking place). Jane is working on a large event and staying in a hotel, and Finn is living and working in the same town.  They see each other one evening after work, in their cars while they are navigating a traffic snarl.  Or something.  The spark is still there.  She follows him to his place and the romance begins.I like the American Dream aspect of this story: if you work hard and do a good job, you can make something of yourself.  Then the question is: is the work you do a job that has integrity, and status?  And how important is status, anyway?  On the surface, Janey's work as an event planner has more status than Finn's.  She works side by side with prosperous clients and gives them creative ways to entertain their friends.  Finn's line of work needs to be more discreet -- a need for quick cash is personal and private.  "Pawn", like bail bonding, check cashing, off-site betting, Bingo halls, slot-machine parlors or loan sharking, shares a busy, low-prestige rung of the American financial services network.  As this story shows, all wealth and status levels of American society use pawn services.In this book, both Janey and Finn work for a prosperous client with a hyphenated last name (maybe only the most privileged Americans would put up with the hassle and inconvenience of such a complicated name; maybe only the most status-conscious Americans would delude themselves that a hyphenated name means more than any other name).  Janey is helping to arrange a high profile party for their daughter, and Finn is making the expensive lifestyle possible by loaning cash to fund it, with the family's fine art as collateral.  Both Janey and Finn are attractive and hard-working, but Janey can talk openly about her job while Finn feels a need to hide his from Janey.  Finn worries that high-end pawn work (even when his company clears $2 million in a year) has a stigma that will chase Janey off.Janey has grown up with the burden of her parents' ambitions for her.  As the daughter of the mayor, Janey was a high school cheerleader who ran coat drives and other charitable efforts that needed positive energy and a talent for coordinating and promoting.  Her family's situation in the town turns out to be short-lived: her father goes to jail for corruption and her mother has had psychological setbacks and lives in a mental health facility (sadly, in American life, poor mental health is seen as a weakness or defect).  Janey, honest, hardworking and relocated out of Dodge, wonders where she stands, and whether she will inherit her mother's mid-life mental health break-down?  Can she escape her father's tarnished reputation?  And what man would choose a woman whose father was a crook and whose mother lives out her years in an institution?