Book Review: The Finalists

Synopsis:

On a beautiful spring day, six college students with nothing in common except a desperate inability to pay for their education gather to compete for the prestigious Hyde Fellowship.

Milo — The front-runner.
Natalia — The brain.
James — The rule follower.
Sydney — The athlete.
Duffy — The cowboy.
Emily — The social justice warrior.

According to the rules, they must surrender all electronic devices when they enter Hyde House, an aging Victorian structure that sits in a secluded part of campus.

Once inside, the doors are locked and no one is allowed to leave during the eight hours spent with a college administrator who will do almost anything to keep the school afloat, and Nicholas Hyde, the privileged and notoriously irresponsible heir to the Hyde family fortune. If any of the students leaves before time is up, they will be immediately disqualified.

One of the six finalists drops dead. The other students fear they will be picked off one by one.

As a violent protest rages outside, and with no way to escape, the survivors viciously turn on each other.

The Finalists is author David Bell’s examination of the lengths to which both students and colleges will go in order to survive in a resource-starved academic world.

Review:

David Bell has published eleven previous novels, including Somebody I Used to Know, Since She Went Away, Bring Her Home, Somebody’s Daughter, Layover, The Request, and Kill All Your Darlings.

With The Finalists, he again sets his story on a Kentucky college campus, a familiar location for him since he serves as a professor of English at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green. He received his Ph.D. in creative writing from the University of Cincinnati, and co-founded and directs the university’s Masters in Fine Arts in creative writing program.

Bell describes the book as “timely, claustrophobic, suspenseful, surprising, explosive” and at the outset, asks readers to suspend their disbelief and accept the story’s premise. Six finalists, all students at Hyde College, are competing on the third Saturday in April for the Hyde Fellowship which has been awarded for the past one hundred and fifty-two years. The private liberal arts college was founded by Major Ezekiel Hyde, who served in the Union Army during the Civil War and established the college not long after.

On the morning of the competition, the students arrive at Hyde House, the stately but somewhat dilapidated Victorian home on the edge of the campus that once served as the Hyde family residence, to find a protest underway. The campus police are working to control the crowd that objects to the anticipated arrival of Nicholas Hyde, the great-great-great-great grandson of the school’s founder, to administer the competition. It will be the first time Nicholas will do the honors, since his father, Theodore, died recently, leaving Nicholas the sole Hyde heir to a fortune made mostly through coal. The company has announced its intention to move away from coal to green energy over the course of the next two decades. Nicholas has a reputation for being spoiled, entitled, and irresponsible, which he lives up to when he arrives disheveled and hung over.

The protestors are also angry about recently-discovered information about Ezekiel’s military career as a result of research conducted by one of the college’s history professors. It seems that the statue on campus of Ezekiel on his horse, Lancer, heralding him as a war hero does not tell the whole story. Now there is proof that Ezekiel participated in the Palmyra Massacre on October 18, 1862, in Palmyra, Missouri. Ten Confederate prisoners of war were executed in reprisal for the abduction of a local Union supporter, Andrew Alsman, even though none of them had any connection to his disappearance.

The Hyde Fellowship finalists are chosen by the Hyde family, based on a combination of academic achievement and financial need. The winner will have any outstanding student debt up to a maximum of $100,000 paid in full and receive a full scholarship for the remainder of their education that includes tuition, books, and room and board. Upon graduation, they are assured an entry-level job with the Hyde Corporation. The winner must accept the job and work for at least one year or forfeit the remainder of the prize. Runners-up receive $5,000.

But the arcane Hyde Scholarship bylaws prohibit anyone from entering the house before the presiding member of the Hyde family arrives. And once the competitors and administrators enter the house, they must remain there for the full eight hours. “If anyone steps so much as one foot out the door, they are disqualified from any consideration for the Hyde Scholarship and all its attendant perks.” The chief of police points out that he has inspected every door and window to ensure that they are all secured (in fact, they are nailed shut), and once he locks the front door from the outside, there is no way to unlock it from the inside. “Per the Hyde family bylaws.”

“There’s something ominous about being locked inside a house,” Troy Gaines notes in his first-person narration through which Bell tells the tale. In past years, he has assisted Theodore during the competition. He’s anxious to pin Nicholas down about his support for the 100 More Initiative he has been working on for the past two years, during which he has failed to meet his fund-raising goal in his role as the college’s Vice President for Institutional Development. The Initiative is a plan to increase the number of minority and first-time students who enroll at Hyde College and Nicholas promised that the Hyde family will contribute two million dollars toward the effort. In recent years, the Hyde family has reduced its contributions to the college which has struggled to compete with other institutions offering their students more up-to-date technology and courses, not to mention modern dormitories and classrooms. Troy misses his days as a professor, when he could really get to know and mentor his pupils, lamenting that now he hardly knows most of the students. “I sold out for money. My fault for having three kids who want to go to college.” The college’s President has made it very clear that Troy’s job is on the line.

The six finalists will compete following the handwritten, highly detailed bylaws that govern every aspect of the proceedings, including the lunch menu, that Nicholas keeps in his locked briefcase. In the morning, they will be served tea and then draft an essay that responds to a prompt. Following lunch, they will participate in individual interviews conducted by Nicholas and Troy. They will be judged on comportment, presentation, and communication, and Nicholas has the sole power to evaluate the competitors and select the winner. There is no appeal process.

Bell has said that “stories begin with characters. Characters drive the plot rather than the other way around. I think characters and story come first.” He has amassed an intriguingly complex, if largely unlikable cast of characters, and skillfully makes every one of them a suspect at various points in the tale. The oldest finalist is forty-two-year-old Captain James Stephenson, a history major who served in the U.S. Army for twenty-five years. Originally from Los Angeles, he has a wife and two children, and is intent on being the first student of color to ever win the prestigious scholarship. Duffy Mansfield is an agriculture major who grew up raising cattle in a nearby county. Sydney Mosley is a marketing major from Plainfield, Illinois and a member of the volleyball team with “Persistence” tattooed on one arm. Her friend, Milo Reed, an art major from Louisville, arrives in a BLM T-shirt and announces that his “politics are really important” to him. Milo has the highest grand point average of any current student. Natalia Gomez, an honors student from Columbus, Ohio, is studying cellular biology. And Emily Paine, from Montgomery, Alabama, is majoring in creative writing She arrives last and is observed walking with some of the protestors gathered outside the house.

The drama begins immediately as the finalists, some of whom are already acquainted, meet each other, are introduced to Nicholas and Troy, and the rules are explained to them. They quickly size each other up and begin angling to establish any possible advantage for themselves. After they gather in the parlor for tea, they begin the written exam, but it’s not long before one of them suddenly dies. Since no one has a cell phone and there is no landline in the home, it is impossible to summon help without leaving the house to summon the campus police who are holding the protestors off at some distance from the residence. One finalist voices what everyone is thinking: “Isn’t it clear someone killed him to get him out of the way of the competition?”

From there, Bell illustrates, through Troy’s thoughts and observations, the machinations and deliberations of the group as they weigh the pros and cons of abandoning the competition in light of the tragedy. As they debate whether to proceed, and explain their justifications, the day wears on and the available choices narrow even as the characters’ levels of fear and suspicion escalate. Bell deftly reveals the competitors’ backgrounds and motivations for agreeing to compete for the scholarship, as well as advocating for forging ahead with the selection of a winner . . . or finding a way to escape from the home in which dead bodies are piling up. He notes that “they all have issues outside of school involving their families and personal lives that come out in the book and affect their ability to pay for school as well” and it “was a lot of fun to create both empathy and suspicion around everyone.” At various points, ideas are voiced and vetoed as Jonathan consults Ezekiel’s exhaustively explicit bylaws and reveals the various contingencies outlined therein.

With this moderately-paced locked-room mystery, Bell once again demonstrates his ability to deliver an entertaining story replete with red herrings, misdirection, surprising revelations, and an ending that most readers will not guess. Is there a murderer inside the Hyde house? And if so, how many victims will he/she claim? Bell masterfully brings his fully developed characters to life through snappy, believable dialogue and Troy’s descriptions of his interactions with them. Troy is at the heart of the tale and the most sympathetic. He has sold out and knows it. He surrendered the career that provided him a sense of purpose and fulfillment because of economic pressures. The ever-escalating cost of a college education impacts all involved, including the professors and administrators who do not earn enough to send their own children to the institution that employs them, even taking into account the discounts they are ordinarily offered. Troy has been unable to keep up with his employer’s demand that he bring in large donations, putting his current position as a vice president is in jeopardy. He understands and appreciates the sense of powerlessness and despair that drives the finalists, even as he is repulsed at times by their behavior and has no idea which, if any of them, he dares trust. He is trapped and constrained in many of the same ways he learns the students are, and relates to their perception that they are part of a system that is unjust, excluding them and condemning them to failure without affording them a fair chance to succeed. For those reasons, he is deeply committed to the 100 More Initiative and determined to ensure that it is launched . . . if he gets out of Hyde house alive.

Bell says his motivation for the captivating story was personal. “I’ve taught at the college level for years, and I’ve seen up close how difficult it is for students to pay for school — and for the schools themselves to keep the lights on sometimes,” he relates. “I had my own protracted experience with student loan debt as an undergraduate.” The Finalists succeeds as a thought-provoking examination of the ways desperation and the feeling of being an outsider for whom success is beyond one’s grasp can drive people to do the unthinkable.

Excerpt from The Finalists

The house sits on the far eastern edge of campus, nestled in the woods among the sycamores, the maples, and the white oaks, all older than the college. Older than Kentucky itself. To reach it by car, one must turn left off the main road that circles campus and onto Ezekiel Hyde Lane, a narrow, winding strip of asphalt that cuts through the trees, enters the clearing, and ends in the small parking lot on the side of Hyde House. On foot, the house can be reached by way of the numerous paths that cut through the trees and give the campus its natural beauty.

I step out of my car and look back up the road I just traveled, and it’s easy to believe the world doesn’t exist even though the rest of campus is just a third of a mile away. Standing on the Hyde House grounds can feel like standing in another century, which is exactly the way Ezekiel Hyde, the founder of the college and its first president, wanted it to stay.

The sun is bright, and its rays hit the windows of Hyde House, reflecting the light, capturing the morning glow.

Is it weird to say the sight of that house still lifts my spirits?

It’s eight fifteen, and I’m early. Which is good. I want to be here before the students. More than anything, I want to be here before Ezekiel Hyde’s great-great-great-great-grandson, Nicholas, arrives.

I climb the portico steps to the Neo-Federal structure. Up close the brick is more weathered than I realized. I reach for the brass knob, which is tarnished. The heavy black door needs to be repainted. For years, the college’s board of trustees has wanted to renovate the house, but the money is never there. The college has a list of projects that never get done.

I pull on the knob and, not surprisingly, find the door locked.

I step off the right side of the portico, my shoes sinking into the soft soil, and press my face against the window. I’ve been in Hyde House many times for college events and know the layout well. I’m staring into the music room, the space where Major Hyde, his family, and subsequent generations of Hydes came to listen to recitals on the piano. The piano originally moved to the house by Major Hyde fell into disrepair and was sold in the 1990s, but a music stand remains along with a bust of Major Hyde’s favorite composer, Wagner.

The sun warms the back of my neck. I wait on the lawn in front of the house. In the distance, the campus is quiet on a Saturday morning in April. The students sleep off the night before. Purple hyacinths bloom in the flower beds, and I catch their overwhelming scent. A robin chirps in a nearby tree.

I want to call Rachel, apologize for our fight earlier. Money. We only fight about money. We have to decide whether to get new windows or a new roof, and we disagree about which is the higher priority. Our household is like the college-there’s never enough money to go around.

But before I can hit the call button, the phone rings.

“Shoot,” I say, then answer. “Hello?”

“Hey, Troy. It’s Grace.”

“Hey, Grace.” I try to keep my voice buoyant and not let any irritation show, even though my boss-the president of the college-is calling to check up on me. But she’s not just my boss-she’s my friend. She and Rachel belong to the same book club, and just last weekend Grace and her husband, Doug, came over to our house for drinks. “How are you on this fine morning?”

“Is he there?” she asks. She cuts to the chase. Today is about business. On another day, we would talk about our kids-Grace’s oldest son, Michael, is in the same grade as my oldest daughter, Rebecca-but I know Grace has other things on her mind.

“If by ‘he’ you mean Nicholas Hyde, then no, he isn’t here yet. No one is.”

“Damn it. When did you talk to him last?”

“It’s been about a month. And that was just a short e-mail.”

“Yeah.” Grace sounds defeated. She never sounds defeated. “I can’t get ahold of him either. Did you know he left Kentucky and moved to California?”

“He did? I thought he was still living in Lexington. He didn’t tell me.”

“He’s lost both his parents in the last year. That’s a terrible blow for anyone. And I know he was close to his mother. Very close.”

“Maybe that’s why he moved to California. His mom was his last real family tie here.”

“I’m worried about this, Troy. He’s not connected to the college or to Kentucky the way the Hydes always have been. You know as well as I do his father would never have left us twisting in the wind.”

“You’re absolutely right. I’m worried too. Nicholas is pretty much the only living heir of Ezekiel Hyde. Certainly the only direct descendant. And he controls the estate.”

“And they’ve been giving us less and less every year. For the last decade. And it’s been coming to us later and later every year, which makes it harder to budget and plan. Is it too early for a drink?”

“A bit. But if you want to get one tonight, you know our patio bar is always open to you and Doug.”

A car comes down the main road and turns onto Ezekiel Hyde Lane. It makes the slow, winding run in my direction and pulls up and parks next to mine. An older model with a dent in the fender. A middle-aged man steps out, trim and tall. He wears a dark suit with a white shirt and a thin black tie.

“The students are starting to arrive. I think this is-”

“Troy,” Grace says, “remember what we talked about.”

I know right away what she means. The 100 More Initiative I’ve been working on for the past two years.

“I think it’s fantastic you want to increase the number of minority and first-time students at the college. That’s why we promoted you to this position. It’s not just because you’re my friend and a nice guy. It’s to raise money. But we’ve been falling short. You’ve been falling short. The Hydes are giving less, so we need to raise more from other sources. And the board is-”

“Nicholas promised us the money for One Hundred More. Two million dollars. We shook hands on it.”

“Do you know how much a handshake is worth?” Grace asks. “Don’t let him leave without getting a real commitment. Okay?”

“That’s my plan.”

“I’m sorry, Troy. You know I am, but I don’t have to remind you of what’s at stake. For the college or for you personally.”

“I get it, Grace. We’ll toast our success tonight, have a drink around the fire.”

The man in the dark suit comes my way, almost marching. Back straight as a flagpole. A chin made of granite. His heels clack off the pavement, and his hair is cut close to his head.

“Grace, the students are-”

“Wait, Troy. There’s one more-”

The man reaches me, extends his hand. He doesn’t seem to notice or care that I’m on the phone.

“Vice President Gaines, sir. It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m James Stephenson. Retired, United States Army. Thank you for the opportunity to compete for this scholarship, sir.”

We shake. My hand feels like it’s been slammed between two bricks.

“Sir, I know no Black student –indeed, no student of color — has ever won the Hyde Scholarship. I’m intent on being the first, and I want to thank you for the chance.”

“Well, it’s not me. It’s the Hyde family and their board-”

“Sir, I was wondering if I could express some concerns to you before we begin-”

“Troy, are you there?” Grace asks.

“Just a minute, Grace. Can we speak in a moment, Mr. Stephenson?”

“Call me Captain Stephenson, sir.”

“Okay, Captain Stephenson. Can we speak in a moment?”

“Yes, sir.”

He remains in front of me, hands folded behind his back. Parade rest. His shoes are so polished and clean, they reflect the sky like the windows of Hyde House.

I hold up my index finger. “Just one moment.”

I walk fifteen feet away and switch the phone to my other ear. “Okay, Grace, I’m back. But you don’t have to tell me again that I’ve missed my fundraising quotas two years in a row. I’m well aware-”

“No, Troy, not that. Something else. Something about the scholarship process today. I’m afraid we have a situation brewing there. And you need to be ready for it.”

Before I ask Grace what is going on-and before she is able to tell me-two campus police cruisers turn off the main road and come down Ezekiel Hyde Lane. They stop at the boundary of the grounds of Hyde House, a couple of hundred feet from where I stand.

Two officers step out of each cruiser, and a cool wave of relief passes through me.

“Grace, don’t worry about it. The campus police are here, and I see Chief. He’ll let us in now. Problem solved.”

“Troy, that’s not it.”

The four police officers open the trunks of the two cars and pull wooden sawhorses out. They stand them up across the entrance to the Hyde House grounds, creating a barricade that shuts off vehicle traffic. Even Captain Stephenson has turned away from staring at me and fixed his eyes on the activities of the police.

“What’s going on, Grace? The cops are making some kind of perimeter at the edge of the lawn. They’ve never done that before.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Troy.” Grace speaks to me in the way I speak to my daughters when they are slow to understand something. “We’ve received word there are going to be protests during the process today. A number of students are going to gather, so I notified the campus police. We want them to keep the protestors back as far as possible.”

“They’re protesting against their fellow students competing for a big scholarship?”

“No, it’s not that.”

A couple of students come walking toward the house from one of the paths that cuts through the woods from the south. A man and a woman. They appear to be having a passionate conversation. The young woman-who is tall and lanky like an athlete-seems to be trying to convince the guy-who is almost strutting like he’s in a movie-of something. He’s listening, nodding his head as she speaks. Captain Stephenson has noticed them as well and turns in their direction.

“Then what’s the problem, Grace?”

“It’s the Hyde family they’re going to protest. They want us to divest from the Hyde family fortune. You know they think money made in coal is blood money.”

“I thought the Hydes settled that. They have a plan to move away from coal to green energy during the next two decades.”

“You know that’s not nearly fast enough for the students,” Grace says.

“What good does it do to block the road?” I ask. “Can’t someone reach us by one of the paths?”

“They met outside the student union. Then they’re marching over to Hyde House as a group. We know which way they’re going.”

The police appear to have the sawhorses all in place. And just in time. About thirty students carrying signs and chanting approach Hyde House from the direction of campus. They walk down the main road, the one I just drove over to get here, and then turn down Ezekiel Hyde Lane, heading in the direction of the police barricades. It’s hard for me to make out the chant from this distance, but I can kind of read one of the signs, which a student holds high in the air. It’s written in red paint-at least I hope it’s paint-on white poster board.

NO BLOOD MONEY!

Captain Stephenson turns his whole body in that direction, facing the protestors. “I don’t like the looks of that,” he says, shaking his head.

For a moment, I worry. What will happen when they reach the cops? I don’t want anyone to get hurt. And I don’t want any arrests or fights. The police are outnumbered, but I know they’re armed. The cops tense, their bodies primed for action. They all stand with hands on hips, but I know that puts their hands closer to weapons-pepper spray, Tasers, guns.

The protestors continue to chant as they approach the edge of the lawn, their faces angry and determined.

“Grace, I think we . . .”

“What is it, Troy?”

My body tenses like I’m about to brawl.

But the protestors stop behind the barricade. They don’t appear interested in pushing their way through or making any more trouble. They chant and wave their signs, but there’s no actual trouble.

I breathe a sigh of relief.

“It’s okay, Grace. They stopped. They’re facing the cops, but they’re not too loud. Once we’re inside, the students should be able to concentrate. The house is old and keeps sound out pretty well. But they are blocking the driveway to the house.”

“The cops are going to take care of that,” she says. “They can protest, but they can’t block traffic.”

The young man and woman continue their discussion off to the side. They stand close together. The woman wipes at the corner of her eye. A tear?

“Grace, I think I need to go. The students are arriving.”

“There’s one more thing.”

“What else could there be?”

“Can you read any of the other signs?”

“I can try, but you’re testing my middle-aged eyesight. They’re kind of far away.” I watch, squinting as the signs move up and down. Someone beats on a tambourine, making an oddly discordant jingling. “I think there are a couple about blood money. One about paying for education with coal. Another about killing Mother Earth. Oh, and one nasty one about slaughtering the innocents. I guess it has a nice biblical touch. You can tell the protestors I appreciate the large type they’re using.”

“That’s the one I was worried about,” Grace says.

“What about it?”

Grace sighs into the phone again. “Well, we were trying to keep this under wraps until we could fully investigate the claim, but word leaked out on social media this morning. It’s about Ezekiel Hyde’s service in the Civil War.”

“You mean Major Ezekiel Hyde.”

When I say the word “Major,” Captain Stephenson looks my way. He raises his hand like we’re in a classroom, reminding me he still wants to talk. I hold up my index finger again and then point to the phone.

“Yes,” Grace says, “Major Ezekiel Ellis Hyde. This is courtesy of Charlie Porter in History.” She sighs. “Oh, Charlie. He’s uncovered something about Major Hyde’s service in the Civil War.”