The Show Outside

The newly completed novel manuscript by Rick Borsten

Call me a gimpy, six-foot-seven-inch, one-armed orphan–although there must be a better word than orphan for someone who's killed both his parents.

So begins the manuscript of Rick Borsten’s new novel, The Show Outside, set during a tumultuous two-week period in the life of 25 year-old narrator, Will Aikman, who’s still dealing with the devastating fallout from a car wreck seven years earlier—his fault—in which both his parents died, his younger sister Zooey suffered brain damage, and he himself lost his right arm.

Once a top national basketball prospect, Will now struggles through his days popping pills while fending off  phantom limb pain, depression, guilt, anxiety, and PTSD.  He’s also doing his best to assist the three intellectually disabled adult foster residents he’s paid by the state to house and support (each of them singularly quirky, yet in many ways more emotionally healthy than Will), most notably his sister Zooey.

Ever since her brain injury, Zooey has been fixated on hanging out in the back yard, observing and participating in what she refers to as “the show outside.”  She can spend hours watching a tulip blossoming or weeks enticing a crow to perch on her shoulder but is scarcely able to have a coherent conversation with another human. Will believes it’s now his primary responsibility in life to protect Zooey from further harm; but, when he looks at her, all he can see is a broken version of the bright young girl whose life he already ruined. 

Enter Daphne DeLuca, a 22 year-old dreadlocked, Hawaiian-Italian longboarding college student Will hires as a part-time assistant. Daphne brings new energy to the foster home:  tutu parties, dancing, Bob Marley music, and plans for exciting weekend outings.  Although he quickly learns she has a live-in boyfriend, Will remains smitten by Daphne—as exhilarated by her presence as he is tormented by her unavailability. But it’s the way she sees and relates to Zooey—and how this impacts the way Will begins to see and relate to his sister and her backyard “wowlands,”—that leads him on an unexpected journey of discovery and the possibility of healing and transformation.