The Senior

September 1, 2008
Some readers might be familiar with the story of Flynt, a 59-year-old owner of a sports-equipment company who decided, more than 35 years after being tossed off his college football team, to return to his alma mater, try out for the team, and play out his fourth year of eligibility. As recounted in the press, he made the team, taking the field as a linebacker. But the story reported in the newspapers only touched on the authors deeply troubled past (family violence, fights, jail time) and the religious awakening that turned his life around. The full story reveals the author to be not merely a man who wanted to finish what he started but also a man who saw his return to the gridiron as a means of revisiting, and to some extent exorcising, the demons of his past. Unlike Stefan Fatsis recent A Few Seconds of Panic, which took a journalistic (and frequently humorous) approach to the subject of a grown man joining a football team, this memoir is introspective, thoughtful, and may even prompt some readers to reexamine their own lives.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)