Admission – Travis Thrasher

Admission by Travis Thrasher
Published by Moody Publishers on January 1, 2006
Genres: Fiction, Christian, Suspense
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The author of Gun Lake and The Second Thief is back with a riveting tale of how buried mistakes can resurface at any time. Adventure Company entrepreneur Jake Rivers gets a call from the parents of a woman who has disappeared and was last seen with Alec, Jake's best friend from college. The girl's parents believe she is hiding out with Alec, but Jake hasn't heard from him in ten years. Jake's moved on from his college days, but the memories of what he's tried to forget--a friend's suicide, an enemy's mysterious disappearance--keep resurfacing. Someone wants to keep him from discovering what really happened.

Rock on. Most folks remember their college years with some amount of fondness – some for the relationships they made, others for the fun times they had. Jake Rivers had both but he’s put his college experiences in the past. He’s glad that he can’t remember what happened that night. But eleven years later, he’s forced to track down the old gang, go back to his old school, and just maybe uncover exactly what happened during the spring break of his senior year.

Travis Thrasher follows up Gun Lake with Admission, an edgy drama that cuts between Jake’s wild college years at Providence College and eleven years in the future as Jake tracks down his posse from the past to find his former best friend Alec. In the past the story leads up to that fateful spring day that – due to way too much alcohol – he cannot remember and no one will tell him. In the present, Jake discovers that someone doesn’t want him dredging up old secrets.

In Admission, Thrasher paints a realistic picture of redemption with compelling characters. It’s an interesting character study of Jake and his college friends and how they the events of that night forever affected them. Thrasher reminds us that while the road to redemption is always accessible, each individual must take the initiative to walk down that road.

Thrasher gives us another solid offering in this story that proves that though sins have consequences, restoration and redemption is available for those who accept. My sole issue with this novel is that the reason why Jake is dealing with his past (he is searching for the daughter of a client) seems rather disconnected from the rest of the story, but its ancillary enough not to matter or effect the story greatly. He more than makes up for it with the rest of the novel, painting a realistic picture of Jake and company’s college life and their adult lives that follow.

Mini Q&A with Travis

Josh: In the story, you paint Providence college in somewhat of a harsh light, especially in the exchange between the college’s president and Jack. What was your intention in that scene?

Travis: There were a few scenes in Admission that came right out of real life, where I didn’t make up anything. The fight was one of those. This conversation was another. Yet my hope in this was also to show that Jake had built a bad reputation for himself, and thus deserved some of the stuff that was happening to him. In one sense, it was unfair what the president said to him. In another, Jake deserved it.

Josh: In one the scenes, the main character jumps off a building onto a stack of mattresses. Did that event have any real-life counterpart in your history?

Travis: Not jumping off the roof onto the stack of mattresses. But the driving on the soccer field did happen. And that red Honda CRX—yep, it was real.