Fall River Dreams
A Team's Quest for Glory, a Town's Search for Its Soul
ISBN10: 0312134916
ISBN13: 9780312134914
Trade Paperback
368 Pages
$24.99
CA$33.99
Bill Reynolds here travels with a high school basketball team through both the past and present of an American town. Fall River, Massachusetts, is a once-prosperous industrial center haunted by its history, a blue-collar town facing hard times and an uncertain future. Each autumn, however, the Durfee High School basketball team begins its annual drive for the state championship: a quest that often inspires and sometimes consumes kids, coaches, families, teachers, and everyone else in Fall River.
Fall River Dreams is the story of one season's odyssey—a work "about history, education, the New England economy, sociology, and modern society. It is about people first and sports second . . . Reynolds has put together a book that should become a New England classic" (Providence Phoenix).
Reviews
Praise for Fall River Dreams
"A beautiful blend of sweetness, pain, and truth. Basketball runs through this book like a stream of light, illuminating all it touches."—Rick Telander, author of Heaven Is a Playground
"Reynolds does a fine job . . . Fall River Dreams illustrates that sports can provide marvelous highs, but that the joy of achievement can be supplanted by the desperate need to win—again and again and again."—The New York Times Book Review
"Insightful . . . Reynolds is at his best when he focuses on the tempestuous relationship between Durfee's veteran coach and his rebellious star player. It's a classical generational clash."—Los Angeles Times Book Review
"A remarkable book, open and honest, full of the joys and the pain of growing up."—The Sporting News
"Bill Reynolds is one of the best writers around, and this book is the Friday Night Lights of high school basketball."—Dan Shaughnessy, author of Ever Green
"Simply a classic . . . every word has the ring of truth. Reminds me of Norman Maclean's Young Men and Fire."—Greg Donaldson, author of The Vile
"Reynolds uncovers, in a moving and sensitive book, the desperate values of a city whose only dream is basketball glory."—James Chace, Newsday
"Superbly observed and compassionately rendered, Fall River Dreams reminds us of why sports matter."—Alexander Wolff, author of Raw Recruits