Break Point Down

Kitt Buchanan is young, rich, a champion athlete at the top of his sport, and life is training, travel, and triumph. Talk shows, interviews, magazine articles, fan clubs. Unlimited bank accounts. Can he not be a self-indulgent jerk? Is it possible to be outrageously gifted and balanced too? His focus is a little ball, excellence, getting better and better in less and less. But life abruptly changes, and he has no one to blame but himself. And a few others. But who? And why? And where is the line between courage and stupidity? In Break Point Down a repeat Grand Slam champion follows a dream that quickly gets away from him. Now the skills that made him a champion must make him a man.

West, then living in the Great Land--Marthy Johnson saw flawed and fascinating people everywhere. Individual, yet remarkably alike. There was a certain brotherhood to their problems and to their solutions. Starting in nursery school, she began to mentally carve out characters and build stories around them, exploring questions. At first they were the questions of a child, but the child grew up, and so did the questions. Marriage and motherhood became a stimulating give-and-take--they took work, time, and self, and gave crises, bonds, and bursts of light and love. Story-telling was put on hold . But when Marthy saw her first tennis match, on television, the background of Break Point Down was born. The match was a U.S. Open semifinal, and she had to figure out the game and the rules. The story came much later. And it was not about tennis. It was about people and pain and marvelous possibilities. The questions she always wanted answers to.