A Tight Grip: A Novel about Golf, Love Affairs, and Women of a Certain Age

Some people might say that, at age 46, Jane Par Parker is too old to win golf tournaments; too old to fear her mother; and too old, after twenty years, to still feel heavy grief over the murder of her father. But Par has an obsessively tight grip on the past, and no one can tell her to live her life otherwise.

Par is maniacally driven to win a golf tournament she hasn’t been able to win in ten years. Recent low-scoring rounds have strengthened her confidence. Distractions conspire against her: she spends a night in jail for a crime she blames on her husband; reads about her arrest on the front page; learns she has an enemy at the newspaper; and discovers shocking love affairs by those closest to her.

A Tight Grip celebrates the bonds of female friendships as Par Parker processes her life with her three closest friends. She discovers the transformative power of adversity, and seizes options to evolve as a person, an athlete, and a best friend.