Fighting in the Shade

Starred review from May 16, 2011
High school football mixes with Faust in this blitz of a novel from Watson (The Calling). Billy Dyer is the new kid in town at his Florida high school during the mid-1960s. He's also a talented football player who brings an element of violence to the game, and during a perverse hazing ritual, Billy refuses to endure humiliation and busts his way out with the same force he brings to his football playing. The ensuing fight has dire consequences: Billy is kicked off the team, but, more significantly, during the melee, he badly hurts one of his teammates. With the team now shorthanded and losing, the school's boosters beg Billy to come back to the team, and out of concern for his motherârecently divorced from Billy's alcoholic lawyer father, and none too well-offâBilly negotiates a price and becomes a star, but at what cost? Meanwhile, Billy's father may be in on some dodgy dealings with a shady character who has an interest in the team, and, more pointedly, in Billy. The novel avoids slipping into morality tale excess as it spins out a big Dennis Lehaneâlike story of society, opportunity, and consequences, revealing Watson as an accomplished storyteller.

Starred review from July 15, 2011

The coming-of-age tale of a boy who becomes a man through the savage rites of high-school football. Honor, loyalty, even life and death form the core of this wrenching story, while sport is the mere shell.

A newcomer to town, Billy Dyer tries out for the Spartans in the Gulf Coast city of Oleander, Fla., in 1964. He is relentless in his hitting and blocking, all the brutal fundamentals of the game. Only Sim Sizemore stands between him and a varsity slot, but Billy rebels during the team's bizarre Mystery Night ritual, and Sim suffers a horrible injury. With Billy taking Sim's place, the Spartans win game after game and appear headed for the state championship. Winning matters above all else to many of Oleander's citizens, and Billy's fierce drive and talent hold the key. But will he spill the secrets of Mystery Night and destroy Oleander football? Important men accuse Billy of off-field actions that dishonor the team and push him into a Faustian bargain that allows him to continue playing. Billy lives with his divorced and hapless father, whose desperate troubles intertwine with Billy's. Many people fear Billy for what he knows and might do; many more admire him as long as he wins on the gridiron—but God help him otherwise. But the plot goes beyond football. Do rich men own Billy the way they own his father? Do they own the city itself? The climactic scene appears slightly contrived, written with a movie in mind, yet it brings the novel to a satisfying conclusion.

Watson has given poor Billy Dyer more trouble than any teenager should have to bear. Readers will certainly root for him, but they had better not count on a warm-and-fuzzy ending.

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August 1, 2011
In this gritty story of manhood and athletics set in 1960s Oleander, Florida, Watson says plentyand beautifully, tooabout what society asks of its young men and what it costs them to deliver. Billy Dyer's parents have recently divorced, and he and his secretive father have moved to a dicey neighborhood in a football-crazy town. A natural athlete with a particular liking for the violence of the game, Billy puts in brutal summer days on the practice field and makes the team. But during a tortuous hazing session that has long been required of the players, he rebels and badly injures his rival for the starting position. He's kicked off the team but rerecruited when it becomes painfully clear the team can't win without him. Meanwhile, he learns some deeper truths from his English teacher, a girlfriend, and his father, who works at the behest of one of the town's most powerful citizens. Watson's visceral descriptions of the physicality of sport are more than matched by his knowing depiction of small-town corruption in this fast-paced coming-of-age story.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)