Chance to Break

It is the first day of summer but Trevor Davis can find no solace in that. His wife has divorced him, taking custody of their two teenage daughters, and his San Francisco real estate company is bankrupt, a victim of the 2008 subprime mortgage fiasco. Trevor would normally seek refuge on a tennis court but events have conspired to deny him even this simple pleasure. And before the day is out he will need to undertake a spontaneous and uncertain overseas trip, a journey he hopes will be the first step towards some measure of redemption.

Set during the opening days of Wimbledon, when an otherwise ordinary men's singles match seems incapable of ending, Chance to Break bridges the aftermath of this century's Great Recession with the mid-1970s economic malaise that permeated Trevor's high school years in Oxford and the dark days of occupied France that defined his parents' youth. It is the story of a man's courage in the face of past failure and present adversity, of trying not to succumb to defeat, even when victory seems lost.