Quarterback
Fifty-four minutes after Kris Hopkins was born, his father snuck into the hospital nursery and slid a miniature football into his hands. It has been there ever since, helping him through the death of his mother, through a childhood with a single parent that was always working, even getting him a college education.
Now thirty-seven and the aging star quarterback for the Portland Warriors, Kris suffers his fifth concussion and for the first time is forced to take stock of the life around him. Of the son that abhors football and goes out of his way to avoid games. Of the college sweetheart and mother of his child he never did right by. Of the fancy car and posh home that all lend themselves to an image he never intended to create.
More than that though, it forces him to take stock of his own mortality and trying to determine how someone that has always identified himself as a football player comes to grips with that aspect of his life ending.
Side Commentary
As with Be My Eyes, this started as a screenplay that a reverse-adapted into a novel. In writing the story, I choose professional football as the vehicle for the protagonist, but it really isn't a football story (at least not an exclusive one). One of the pervasive emotions throughout the story is the loss of identity that is experienced when undergoing a major life transition, which I think is something everybody can identify w/ on some level, right?
