Winners Game : A Novel

Fans of Nicholas Sparks and Jodi Picoult will love this heartfelt story of a family struggling to survive the life-threatening illness of a teenage daughter that threatens to tear them apart.

When their teenage daughter Palmer is diagnosed with a life-threatening heart condition, a family rents a house on the Oregon coast near Haystack rock. But once there, the stress of work and constant bickering of Palmer’s two younger siblings move the parents to enlist the help of Grandma Dottie. Grandma Dottie is appalled at how her two youngest grandchildren treat one another. She asks them each to find a rock and throw it as hard and far into the ocean as they can. She has them do this several times, trying to see who can throw the farthest. After a few tries, she asks them to face each other. “Now,” she tells them, “with the same energy that you threw them into the ocean, throw your next rocks at each other.”

Grandma Dottie is glad that neither of them actually throws their last rock. Seeing that she has their attention, she sits them down and they have a conversation about the trivialness of their constant bickering, and how each time they argue, blame, call names, etc. they are hurling stones at one another. Worse, she points out, their behavior is taking a physical toll on their older sister, who desperately needs their love and support. She points out that in the game of throwing rocks into the ocean, it’s possible to have a winner, but in throwing them at each other there are only losers. So begins the Winner’s Game.