Where Dreams Die Hard
A Small American Town and Its Six-Man Football Team
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
Down Farm Road 308, an hour's drive south of Dallas, amidst sprawling fields of cotton lies a small community--Penelope, Texas (population 211). Here, where the only thriving businesses are the granary and the post office, unless you count the soft-drink machine in front of the fire station, two-time Edgar Award-winning writer Carlton Stowers discovered a special town that came together, not only to support their six-man highschool football team--the Penelope Wolverines--through thick and a lot of thin, but also, and more importantly, each other. Where Dreams Die Hard is a warm and revealing portrait of the American heartland--and of one small town's love affair with the team that unites it. "Through his unforgettable depiction of innocence, goodness, loyalty, and friendship...Carlton Stowers gives us a moving portrait of a community that, in the words of one of the Penelope faithful, is like 'stepping into a Norman Rockwell painting.'" (Billie Letts, author of Where the Heart Is) "High school football in Texas is both sport and religion, and Stowers brilliantly brings this to light in Where Dreams Die Hard." (Jim Dent, author of The Junction Boys)
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In tiny Penelope, Texas, population 211, six-man football rules. The game is a scaled-down version of the more common 11-man version, originally designed in the 1930s by a Nebraska coach who wanted small, rural schools to be able to have football teams. Fast forward to today, and six-man football thrives in small Texas communities, where it's played among high schools that have fewer than 99 students. Stowers, a Texas journalist, went to Penelope to observe the world of small-town, small-team football. He intersperses his observations of football practices with interviews with various members of the community, and in doing so paints a picture of present-day rural life. The book poses questions surrounding the survival of small towns, as Stowers himself wonders whether the students he's observing will actually stay in Penelope. Although at times Stowers's narrative could use more visual description to really evoke the place he's writing about, the book is a glimpse into a small town rallying around a cause, and a look at a way of life that city dwellers rarely see.
