“Having lived for many years in Mill Valley – including spending countless hours with my son on the tennis courts of Boyle Park – it is very gratifying for me to read from my debut novel at the Depot Bookstore,” Prell says.
Set during the opening four days of Wimbledon in 2010, when an otherwise ordinary men’s singles match seems incapable of ending, the novel follows the darkly comic travails of Trevor Davis, a former standout junior tennis player whose comfortable Bay Area life has unravelled in the wake of the 2008 subprime mortgage fiasco. The novel ventures from modern San Francisco and England back to 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. Chance to Break tells 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.
“I’m often asked what my novel is about,” Prell says. “I could say it’s about tennis. Or about overcoming adversity. But the truth is, like any reasonably ambitious novel, it’s about the crazy, wonderful, heartbreaking journey that we call life.”
Prell has written for both stage and screen, and his documentary film, Finding Nico, followed his quest to get to know his godfather, a disgraced former Hollywood B-movie actor who may or may not have lived with Marilyn Monroe.
The 411: Author, attorney and former Mill Valley Arts Commissioner Owen Prell is set to sit down for a discussion of his debut novel, Chance to Break at the Depot Bookstore & Cafe on Friday, Nov. 30 at 7pm. 87 Throckmorton Ave. Free. A discussion and book signing will follow the reading. MORE INFO.