The Big Door Prize

Walsh, M.O. The Big Door Prize. New York: Putnam 2020. Print.

First Sentences:

How can you know that your whole life will change on a day the sun rises at the agreed-upon time by science or God or what-have-you and the morning birds go about their usual bouncing for worms?

How can you know?

And why would you think there's another life for you, perhaps another possibility inside of you already, when the walk that you take each dawn is so lovely and safe? When the roads are all paved and the sidewalks just swept and those who move along them, like you, seem so content to re-tread the worn path that they've made?

Why would you think it?.


Description:

These rather long first sentences present the theme of M.O. Walsh's intriguing, whimsical, romantic, and highly compelling novel, The Big Door Prize. Can you change your life, and, if given a bit of an encouraging nudge, would you ? Or would you prefer to stay the steady course of a life that you have carved out over the years, even if it does not always make you feel happy or fulfilled?

One day, in the small town of Deerfield, ("a town so simple it is named for what you might see and where you might see it"), a crude phone booth-like machine called the DNAMIX just appears mysteriously in the local grocery. The sign over the DNAMIX says the machine will tell you what your true potential is.

All you have to do it put in two dollars, insert a swab taken from your inside cheek, and a card is produced with your potential spelled out. Maybe it reads "Magician" or "Cowboy" or "Lover" or "Astronaut" or "Jazz Trombone Player" or "Chair-Saw Sculptor" or even "Royalty." 

The DNAMIX is an immediate sensation in the town. Everyone who tries it begins to completely change their personal lifestyles. New clothes are purchased that are more appropriately suited to their new calling. Jobs are quit. Previously unknown skills are practiced. And eyes are even opened to new possibilities in relationships.

But there are a few skeptics, including a school teacher whose marriage has grown stale; a teen whose wildly-popular twin brother died recently in a car accident; and another dangerous-looking girl who is seeking retribution for some unknown slight.

So what is the power behind this crude machine? Is it really accurate in its predictions? Will people become happier and more content in their new lives? Or will the skeptics somehow prove to townspeople that the machine is a fake and cannot know the future?

For the answers, you will have to read right up to the very last pages. I hope you do as it is a weirdly compelling story with ordinary characters who face the opportunity of completely embracing a renewed love of life for themselves and those around them.

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

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