Summary and Reviews of The Big Door Prize by M.O. Walsh

The Big Door Prize by M.O. Walsh

The Big Door Prize

by M.O. Walsh
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  • Critics' Consensus (7):
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  • First Published:
  • Sep 8, 2020, 384 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Aug 2021, 384 pages
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About This Book

Book Summary

The New York Times bestselling author of My Sunshine Away returns with another instant Southern classic: a gripping and heartfelt novel about a mysterious machine that upends a small Louisiana town, asking us all to wonder if who we truly are is who we truly could be.

What would you do if you knew your life's potential? That's the question facing the residents of Deerfield, Louisiana, when the DNAMIX machine appears in their local grocery store. It's nothing to look at, really--it resembles a plain photo booth. But its promise is amazing: With just a quick swab of your cheek and two dollars, the device claims to use the science of DNA to tell you your life's potential. With enough credibility to make the townspeople curious, soon the former teachers, nurses, and shopkeepers of Deerfield are abruptly changing course to pursue their destinies as magicians, cowboys, and athletes--including the novel's main characters, Douglas Hubbard and his wife, Cherilyn, who both believed they were perfectly happy until they realized they could dream for more...

Written with linguistic grace and a sense of wonder, The Big Door Prize sparkles with keen observations about what it might mean to stay true to oneself while honoring the bonds of marriage, friendship, and community, and how the glimmer of possibility can pull these bonds apart, bring them back together, and make second chances possible, even under the strangest of circumstances.

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Reviews

BookBrowse Review

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Instead of examining the problems of determining a person's potential via DNA analysis, the novel focuses on the emotional fallout that occurs when we feel our potential doesn't align with reality, and skirts around the idea that sometimes it takes outside permission to admit this discrepancy and do something about it. The Big Door Prize is a modern fable that explores issues of choice, personal potential and the myriad ways people go about getting what they want...continued

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(Reviewed by Kelly Hydrick).

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Beyond the Book



Nature vs. Nurture

DNA structure The "nature vs. nurture" debate is what sparks the narrative tension in M.O. Walsh's novel The Big Door Prize. The character Cherilyn refers to the concept of nature vs. nurture when she explains how the unusual DNAMIX machine "tells you your potential, [...] what you could have been if everything would have worked out just right."

The premise of the novel's DNAMIX machine is that a person's potential in life is an innate quality that can be measured in their DNA. That is, it is nature that determines potential. Several characters in the novel are immediately suspicious of the machine and doubt whether it can actually do what it is supposed to. But what does current science say about nature and nurture? Is one or the other more ...

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