Set in a small Southern town during the Reagan presidency, the poems in Tim Peeler"s Checking Out form a narrative arc that follows the fortunes of a young motel desk clerk and his fellow employees. The motor lodge, once the eastern boundary of the town, now exists in a swirl of economic development. As a result, much of the action occurs in the ambiguous area where unstated traditions and social change collide. Idealistic and less than a year out of college, the young clerk encounters the best and worst of humanity. Peeler establishes the psychological and physical setting of the story, then introduces the procession of colorful eccentrics who populate these pages. He lays out in detail the quirky nocturnal episodes, often violent and absurd, that eventually cause the clerk to "silently search for an escape." Finally, Peeler describes the haunted nature of the narrator"s motel memories as he considers their place in his life 25 years later.