Down on Court Five

D0wn on Court Five is a searing, no-holds-barred account of how one woman's face-off with breast cancer helped her better understand herself.

Between treatment and recovery and caring for her disabled husband Jack, Vivian Witkind, a retired Ohio State University researcher, finds staying alive is a full-time job. She looks for sanity wherever she can find it, in her beloved dogs, books and most reliably the game of tennis. For much of that period, she plays enthusiastically on a doubles team composed of older, frayed women like her. Court five is the lowest court, the least competitive in a match, and the one the woman on her last legs is assigned.

Once Vivian is back in the swing, Jack starts losing his downhill fight with multiple sclerosis. She chronicles the extraordinary measures she and her children take to preserve his life and the complex struggles of a family trying to cope with a deadly disease. After his death in 2020, Vivian navigates the twists and turns of grief amid the coronavirus pandemic and learns what it means to endure the unknown. Throughout it all, the endless days and sleepless nights, she never loses her sense of humor and unswerving passion for what her father called a lifetime sport.

In this unflinching memoir about loss, love and the persistence of hope, she offers up her wry and irreverent observations on dying and the ways it has taught her to live life to the brim.