Winners: A Novel
Chronicling the first year after tragedy strikes two families, Steel’s latest grapples with the long, painful road to recovery. When a Tahoe ski lift breaks with Olympic hopeful Lily and her coach onboard, the coach is killed and Lily severely injured. Lily’s operated on by neurosurgeon Dr. Jessie Mathews, who determines that the girl’s spinal-cord injury means that  Lily will never walk again, much less compete in the Olympics. Lily’s single-parent father, Bill, is devastated, since Lily has been his life after his wife’s death. Unbeknownst to Jessie, while she’s operating on Lily, her husband, Tim, and son Jimmy are in a car accident. Tim dies instantly;  Jimmy survives without injury. While Jessie works to keep her four children from despair, Bill first goes through total denial, and then, when Jessie’s diagnosis is confirmed by other doctors and Lily is in Denver’s Craig Hospital, he decides to build Lily Pad, a center for young spinal-cord patients. Steel’s unflinching look at the highs and lows of Bill’s and Jessie’s lives will leave readers crying and cheering. --Pat Henshaw