ESPN sportscaster Mike Greenberg might be a “guy’s guy,” but he’s showing his softer side with his first novel, All You Could Ask For, a great book for book clubs (out in paperback 9/3). The story was inspired by “Heidi’s Angels,” a group of women (Mike’s wife, Stacy, included) who rallied behind their dear friend Heidi Armitage when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. The experience taught them the true value of friendship, sacrifice, and compassion, and inspired Mike to write this novel and create the three female characters in it. In this guest post, Mike a.k.a Greeny and his wife introduce the characters and debate about which of the women was their favorite and who was hard to relate to.
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Meet the Characters from All You Could Ask For:
First off, there is BROOKE, who is still the girl who might have been prom queen, even though she is now 40 years old. Her life with her family is exactly as she always envisioned it and she will not let anything threaten what she has built.
Stacy Says: Brooke is my least favorite of the three women. I have a hard time relating to the way she lives her life and the choice she makes at the end of the book.
Greeny Says: Stacy has disliked Brooke from the moment I began writing, but she is my favorite of the three, she has a purity of purpose that I admire.
Next is SAMANTHA, young and idealistic but prone to bad decisions, because she has no idea what she wants from her life. When we are first introduced to her, she is in the midst of experiencing the biggest mistake she has ever made, which in the long run proves to be the best thing that ever happened to her.
Stacy Says: She’s my favorite, and the star of the book as far as I’m concerned. I find her the most real, and the one I would most be interested in knowing.
Greeny Says: There’s no doubt, Samantha is the moral center of the book, she is much younger than the other two main characters and still has a more idealistic view of life.
Finally, KATHERINE, a powerhouse Wall Street executive who has spent the majority of her life putting up walls, mostly because the two men who mattered most to her both let her down so badly.
Stacy Says: I love her. I know a ton of women like her, everybody does.
Greeny Says: I think Katherine is the most relatable of the women, we all know highly successful people who are tragically flawed. The women are brought together in challenging circumstances but what they learn is how much alike they are, because the truth is we all are in the ways that really matter.
This post originally appeared on ESPN Front Row.
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For more on All You Could Ask For, visit http://allyoucouldaskfor.com/ and follow Mike Greenberg on Twitter (@ESPNGreeny); Stacy Greenberg (@StacyGSG) and William Morrow Books (@WmMorrowBks). All of the author’s proceeds from AYCAF will go to The V Foundation for Cancer Research.
– Annie