Hopscotch

by Steve Cushman

Overview

Fiction. Hope comes as a hopscotch board on the sidewalk entrance of a hospital in Greensboro. Despite efforts to remove the board, it re-appears until physicians, hospital employees, and patients, including Emily, an 8-year-old fighting cancer, and Stan, an Iraqi War veteran, are drawn toward it.

In this moving and sensitive gem of a story, Steve Cushman takes us to the grounds and wards of a city hospital, places he knows well, places where hope and despair, death and healing exist side by side. But when a hopscotch board mysteriously keeps reappearing on a sidewalk near the hospital entrance, despite attempts to have it scrubbed away, what occurs is a kind of miracle. This is not the miracle that makes patients well or alters the reality of their conditions. Rather it is the miracle that comes from remembered joys and shared laughter, from choosing to live fully despite disability and the lifespan that's allotted, however short or compromised by pain. Though Cushman's wonderful cast of characters may make you cry, they will also warm your heart, allowing you to believe again in the power of friendship rediscovered over a childhood game.--Miriam Herin

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781604891782
Publisher:	Livingston Press
Publication date:	05/30/2017
Pages:	146
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Steve Cushman earned an MFA from UNC-Greensboro. After working as an X-ray Technologist for twenty years, he currently works in the IT Department at Moses Cone Memorial Hospital. His debut novel, Portisville, won the 2004 Novello Literary Award. He's published a second novel, Heart With Joy, as well as the poetry chapbooks, Hospital Work and Midnight Stroll. Cushman lives in Greensboro, North Carolina with his family

Editorial Reviews

2017-05-05
In his latest novel, Cushman (Hospital Work, 2013, etc.) introduces a minor miracle into a staid hospital setting, and magic happens. Dr. Boles "couldn't quite figure out how, or why, such a thing would be here." Outside the entrance to a Greensboro, North Carolina, hospital is a hopscotch outline, its "colors of yellow, red, green and blue" adorned with the playful challenge Try It. Walter Winslow of the hospital's board of trustees isn't having it and straightaway calls the housekeeping department to erase it. Somehow, the hopscotch board keeps reappearing. Inexplicable but welcome, its presence comes as a mysterious relief to a large cast of hard-luck cases: a sick little girl who can barely remember what it's like not to be sick, a bitter veteran who left his legs in Iraq, a beleaguered CEO who can't make the hospital as successful as the board would like, a local reporter with a marriage on the rocks. Once the hopscotch chalk has come to stay, things change. A stiff-shouldered doctor "jumped his way across the boxes, before heading to his car"; an old man with dementia recognizes his wife again as he sees her hopping along the board; pediatricians write their patients prescriptions reading "have fun, go outside and play 2 x a day." John, the janitor so often tasked with graffiti removal, briefly considers hiding somewhere to see who keeps drawing this one on the sidewalk, but he decides that "life, he knew, was short on mysteries, and this was one he didn't mind leaving unsolved." Cushman has written an unabashedly inspirational novel, one that aims to quicken the reader's spirits and deliver exemplary lessons through the eyes of characters we can't help but pity and feel fondness toward. Miracles can still take place, even in the dourest spots. Some readers may find it implausible that a thing so small as a chalk game could bring such joy to a diverse and embittered group, but others will find the book uplifting. A clear, inspiring story about needing a bit of hope to cross the distance.

Kirkus Reviews