Corey Sobel, The Redshirt (The University Press of Kentucky)Read about another entry on the list.
The Redshirt may be the only novel about football I’ll ever read, but what a novel about football it is. I highly recommend this heartfelt, unusual, book to every American who has ever watched a football game, attended a college sports event, studied for a test, loved another person. . . In other words, Sobel’s debut works for us all. Based on the author’s high-school football career that continued through his years at Duke University, the novel introduces Miles Furling, who believes his life’s purpose is football—despite his being deeply in the closet and well aware of that fact. Although King College’s football team isn’t the top-drawer program he’d hoped for, he knows deep down that the College will allow him to pursue studies in the literature that he loves. Meanwhile, no one understands why ReShawn McCoy, the country’s top recruit, also chooses King. When the two young men wind up as roommates, a lot of secrets are revealed, but those secrets are less important than the picture readers will get of the brutal costs college football exacts on its players. Did I already say “Highly recommend”? I highly recommend this surprising book.
The Page 69 Test: The Redshirt.
Q&A with Corey Sobel.
--Marshal Zeringue
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