SUGAR FREE, Robin D’Amato’s poignant coming-of-age novel, chronicles the remarkable life of Ginny Eastman, a girl whose love for basketball is equaled only by the challenges she faces in pursuing her hoop dreams. Born with a preternaturally gifted “bounce and run,” Ginny seems destined for hardwood greatness in an era when organized basketball hardly existed for women. Her journey is derailed, however, when a diagnosis of juvenile diabetes at age seven forces her to confront the frailties and betrayals of her own body.
Determined to persist despite the limits imposed by her condition, Ginny develops her skills in secret, honing her talents with an almost religious fervor. As she enters adolescence, however, Ginny’s single-minded obsession with basketball turns increasingly self-destructive. Overwhelmed by grief over her brother’s death in Vietnam, romantic turmoil, and existential despair over her stymied ambitions, Ginny spirals into more than one kind of self-harm—behaviors exacerbated by the need to vigilantly monitor her insulin and glucose levels.
D’Amato renders Ginny’s inner landscape with profound empathy and psychological acuity. A basketball phenom constrained by both biology and circumstance, Ginny emerges as an uncommonly captivating heroine, her journey through the minefields of American girlhood in the late 20th century as suspenseful as any last-second, game-winning shot. Sensitive but never sentimental, Ginny’s testimony is shot through with wry humor and hard-won wisdom: “Diabetics don’t die; they are taken out in pieces.”
SUGAR FREE takes an elegiac turn as Ginny weathers the unrelenting assault of diabetes in middle age. The complications of her condition erode her athletic gifts with ruthless inexorability: neuropathy sets her feet tingling and numb, vision-threatening retinopathy sends her to specialists in dread, and a vulnerability to injury threatens even her ability to jog. The once-indomitable Ginny is forced to confront the bitter irony of a body that has carried her to the pinnacle of athletic achievement but is now seemingly intent on dismantling itself piece by piece. As she reflects on an improbable life in basketball, the sacrifices, and her potential, the novel achieves a ruminative grace—all the more poignant for its hard-won wisdom. “Sometimes, I think I’m still 18,” Ginny muses in late middle age. “My body thinks I’m close to 60, but my mind still wants to get high and dance.”
Spanning decades and historic milestones in women’s sports, from the creation of the WNBA to the triumphant USA Women’s Basketball Team at the 1996 Olympics, SUGAR FREE is, like its heroine, an unconventional chronicle of an unorthodox life. It is a story of passion and perseverance, of pursuing one’s gifts in the face of biological and societal limits. Most of all, it is the story of one woman’s improbable quest to achieve a kind of greatness entirely on her own terms. A quietly affecting novel that will resonate powerfully for anyone who has grappled with difficult dreams, SUGAR FREE is a bittersweet, ultimately triumphant testament to the enduring power of the human spirit.
An unconventional, elegiac sports novel, SUGAR FREE is a profound and often heartbreaking meditation on passion, perseverance, and the sacrifices required to forge an unorthodox life. Author Robin D’Amato has created an indelible heroine in Ginny Eastman.
~Edward Sung for IndieReader