The book, which came out in 2012, tells the story of a grieving father, recently divorced and impoverished, who takes a low-paying job as the personal attendant for a young man with muscular dystrophy.
For Evison, this is a deeply personal tale. Like the protagonist of his novel, he was once depressed and broke, too. Desperate for employment, he took a course in caregiving at a church behind a Howard Johnson’s in Bremerton, Wash. “I learned how to insert catheters and avoid liability,” he says. “Nothing to really prepare me for life as a professional caregiver. I learned in the trenches.”
One of his clients was a young man with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. The two of them struck up a friendship, took a few cross-country road trips and inspired a novel. “Caregiving saved my life,” Evison says. “I learned that when you are at your lowest, that’s when you need to give.”
Rob Burnett, an executive producer of the David Letterman show, has written the script and will be directing the movie. Evison sounds like he has adjusted easily to handing over creative control of his story. “I like the risks Rob took with the script,” he says. “Obviously, the dictates and limitations are different with a 300-page novel and a two-hour film. The timeline is compressed, a character has been written out, another character has been changed. But the important thing to me is that Rob’s script really captures the spirit of the novel.”
Perhaps the greatest challenge will be handling the character of the young man with special needs. Burnett had intended to cast an actor with MD, but wasn’t able to find “someone with the acting chops who really suited the character.” The actor chosen has not yet been announced.
“People with disabilities in books, as in Hollywood, are generally couched in either bitterness, or they are ennobled and over-sentimentalized,” Evison says. “Comedy can be a great evenizer in this respect. Like me, Rob will take an unsentimental tack. One could easily argue that the real disabled character here is not the one in the wheelchair, but Ben [Rudd’s character]. I think he will be perfect. I see this as a role that could push him to new places. I’m excited to see what those places are.”