Sugar coat

Sugar Coat is an original novel about Hitch Hocumb, the only professional optimist in the small Midwestern town of Little Bontemps. His radio show, "The Glass Five-Eighths Full," is the town's most popular program, and he's one of its most popular residents, until Hitch's optimism causes him to make an error in judgment that costs him his job, his friends, and nearly destroys the town. Sugar Coat is the story of how one optimist deals with a streak of bad luck and his search for happiness in a depressed society, asking the question, Though healthier for morale, is optimism always the best outlook? Sugar Coat explores the limits of optimism and questions the pursuit of absolutes in a world full of variables. It also challenges the limits of the written word, using metafiction to look at the differences between the author's reality and the illusion his words create for his reader.Advisers: E. J. Levy; Jeffrey Middents.