Bring One Home: A Memoir of Boyhood, Basketball and Hometown Spirit

Description

In the 1960s, the biggest dream for many young boys across the Upper Peninsula of Michigan was to play for their high school basketball team. In the small town of Bessemer, this meant one thing: wearing the blue and gold of the Speedboys. The two obstacles standing in every young Bessemer boy’s way were bitter winters of endless snow—and a padlock on the doors to the only good gym in town.

One day, when a young, inexperienced coach is hired to lead the team, the Speedboys’ usual aspirations of winning championships suddenly become far humbler: they merely want to win a single game. Mired in an epic losing streak, the team’s declining fortunes come to mirror those of the town itself. Mines are shuttered. Jobs are lost. Decades of prosperity and stability begin to evaporate. And the Speedboys’ losses start piling up. What transpires is nothing less than a test of the town’s soul and the character of its people.

Bring One Home is an irresistible trip back to the days when kids played basketball on snow-covered driveways, drank chocolate malts in the Tip Top Café, and folks got their news in the local barbershop. Told from the viewpoint of a young, anxious boy striving to fulfill the expectations set forth by the adults in his life, this is an underdog story as heartwarming as it is heartbreaking. Filled with historical insights and laugh-out-loud moments, Bring One Home is a tribute to the author’s beloved hometown and their undeniable determination to win.