Review: Overboard Opportunities by Andy Simko

Family values, joys, and crises form the framework for Overboard Opportunities, an engaging saga by debut novelist Andy Simko.

The Hutchfields – Grampa, Granma, and their daughter Emily, her husband Mike, and their two children Jacob and PJ – are close-knit and hardworking, but each one has small secrets and big plans. Their adventures begin when Grampa is building a sidewalk, helped clumsily by Jacob, who is most adept, it seems, at asking questions and arguing about the answers. But Jacob, if not a cement expert, is a baseball whiz and proud of it, and Grampa is supportive of the boy’s accomplishments.

Granma cherishes time spent with Emily and with PJ, her only granddaughter, but worries about Grampa sometimes. Lately for example, he’s obsessed with sadness over the loss of a good friend. Jacob senses Grampa’s bitterness and helps to keep him from going “overboard” with grief. PJ will soon be applauded for her abilities as an ice skater, but efforts to make her a famous Olympian may be more than the little girl is ready to handle. However, she is noticed by a family friend, veterinary student Kayla, who encourages PJ’s natural empathy.

Mike meanwhile is working long hours, struggling to achieve major success in his career, while Emily brings in a bit of needed income assisting a professor on a research project. Grampa will soon be challenged by the passage of yet another friend, and Emily by the attentions of her supervisor. Their neighbor Ashley takes on a goal of weight loss that may lead to gratifying, positive recognition.

Tying all these threads together with a strong sense of humor and an understanding of human foibles, Simko constructs a rollicking day-by-day, hour-by-hour melodrama that one could easily imagine as a family-based TV show, so deftly are each of the characters drawn – their lives in this one novel could fill an entire series of plot arcs. There are romantic intervals, as when Ashley vies to become homecoming queen and meets the man who will be, she hopes, the king of her heart. There is danger, both physical – when someone falls on the ice, and Grampa overdoes his rigorous exercise program – and psychological – when Emily must choose between an ardent suitor and a dutiful spouse. Workplace intrigue enters the picture when Mike is given a seemingly impossible “death march” assignment.

In all of these slice-of-life scenarios, Simko demonstrates how easy it can be to go overboard, to aim high or too high, to devote one’s energies for the best, and attain a questionable result. He writes as though born to the task, with a fine ear for dialog from the youngest to the oldest characters, and a way of putting the reader in new, engaging frames in every setting, from the school baseball field, to new sidewalk strewn with paving tools, to a teenage girl’s fight with a cellphone that is sending insulting messages from mean-spirited classmates.

An old-fashioned novel that is immensely compelling from the start, Overboard Opportunities is a portrayal of American small-town folk with a gentle but important message: be careful what you wish for, and be grateful for what you have.