Teddy Riggs prefers to be known as Daytona: \u201cFastest on the field. Fastest on the road.\u201d Third-generation scion of an oil family, he\u2019s been cut off from his trust fund by his parents and lives with Granny, who will cook him a dozen eggs to slake the appetite he\u2019s developed on \u201cthe juice.\u201d His \u201croid rage\u201d shows up in present-day fights at his old athletic fields, as well as flashbacks to incidents that have him banned from multiple Corpus Christi gyms. Teddy is in a downward spiral (think classic losers from Thelma and Louise to Richard Russo\u2019s Hank Devereaux Jr.), but author Buxton allows him to develop as he falls, including a sexual awakening and nascent sense of purpose. These flickers of growth will keep readers rooting for Teddy even when he\u2019s in the midst of irrational actions and complicated manipulations of friends and family members, trying every way he can to shake people down for money\u2014often to fuel his huge fast-food orders; he eats multiple pizzas in a sitting and assures everyone this is misery. After he has a few encounters with a woman named Tammy, he convinces her to head to Houston so he can attend a seminar given by Pat Dupree, a life coaching guru who says \u201clife is constantly testing our commitment to what we say we want.\u201d Even after he\u2019s received some of his idol\u2019s spurious advice, Teddy can\u2019t stop the wild, disastrous ride he\u2019s on. At one point he lands in prison, convincing his sister, Pam, a veterinarian, to pay his bail. Teddy\u2019s fate is all there in Pam\u2019s reaction to his offer to pay her back in personal training sessions: \u201cShe smiles and starts laughing, laughing like crazy and shaking her head.\u201d She drives off, leaving Daytona Teddy Riggs speeding toward his unhinged future.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Teddy Riggs prefers to be known as Daytona: \u201cFastest on the field. Fastest on the road.\u201d Third-generation scion of an oil family, he\u2019s been cut off from his trust fund by his parents and lives with Granny, who will cook him a dozen eggs to slake the appetite he\u2019s developed on \u201cthe juice.\u201d His \u201croid […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7126,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7125"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7125\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}