In a town deep in the Florida Everglades, where high school football is the only escape, a haunted quarterback, a returning hero, and a scholar struggle against terrible odds.
The loamy black “muck” that surrounds Belle Glade, Florida once built an empire for Big Sugar and provided much of the nation’s vegetables, often on the backs of roving, destitute migrants. Many of these were children who honed their skills along the field rows and started one of the most legendary football programs in America. Belle Glade’s high school team, the Glades Central Raiders, has sent an extraordinary number of players to the National Football League – 27 since 1985, with five of those drafted in the first round.
The industry that gave rise to the town and its team also spawned the chronic poverty, teeming migrant ghettos, and violence that cripples futures before they can ever begin. Muck City tells the story of quarterback Mario Rowley, whose dream is to win a championship for his deceased parents and quiet the ghosts that haunt him; head coach Jessie Hester, the town’s first NFL star, who returns home to “win kids, not championships”; and Jonteria Willliams, who must build her dream of becoming a doctor in one of the poorest high schools in the nation. For boys like Mario, being a Raider is a one-shot window for escape and a college education. Without football, Jonteria and the rest must make it on brains and fortitude alone. For the coach, good intentions must battle a town’s obsession to win above all else.
Beyond the Friday night lights, this book is an engrossing portrait of a community mired in a shameful past and uncertain future, but with the fierce will to survive, win, and escape to a better life.
About Bryan Mealer
Bryan Mealer is the author of Muck City: Winning and Losing in Football’s Forgotten Town, and the New York Times bestseller The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, which he wrote with William Kamkwamba. He is also the author of All Things Must Fight to Live, which chronicled his years covering the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo as a reporter for the Associated Press and Harper’s. His work has appeared in the anthology Best American Travel Writing and was chosen for an Overseas Press Club Award Citation. He and his family live in Austin, Texas.
Editorial Review
The rich soil of the region around Lake Okeechobee, known to locals as “muck,” produces cane sugar and other valuable crops. It also produces professional football players (including current star Santonio Holmes) at a surprising rate, especially considering the equally staggering rates of crime, disease and poverty in the area. Glades Central Raiders and their attempt to win a state championship in the 2010 season are the focus of this entry in the inspirational sports genre. At the center is former NFL wide receiver Jessie Lee “Jet” Hester, who has returned to Belle Glade a hero and agreed to take over as coach of his former team in an attempt to give back to his hometown. The book also spotlights two of the players—wide receiver Kelvin Benjamin, expected to follow Hester to NFL stardom, and linebacker turned underdog quarterback Jamarious “Mario” Rowley—as well as the head cheerleader, Jonteria Williams, who dreams of becoming a doctor. No one on the team or in the town escaped untouched by tragedy, and Hester learned that trying to give back is not without its own pitfalls. The source material, including some fascinating history of the Okeechobee region, is compelling enough without the author’s occasional slips into purple prose, and the chronological jumps in the narrative can be confusing. But there is real drama here, with the stakes much higher than the question of who wins or loses the big game. – Kirkus Reviews
For Some, Gridiron The Only Escape From ‘Muck City’
NPR Book Review – October 27, 2012 (Excerpt)
It’s almost certain that during this NFL season, you’ll see a player from a place that’s called Muck City.
There are five graduates from Belle Glade, Fla., in the NFL right now. Belle Glade, on the shore of Lake Okeechobee, is surrounded by black soil, also known as the “muck” that’s renowned for growing sweet corn, vegetables and sugar cane.
Over the past generation, Belle Glade Central High School has sent 30 players onto the NFL. They are proud of that record, but it might also have come at a cost.
Bryan Mealer spent a year in the town of Belle Glade, Fla., and his new book, Muck City: Winning And Losing In Football’s Forgotten Town, spotlights the stories of players, their families, their coach and a town that struggles to win a spot on the field, and life. He talked with Weekend Edition host Scott Simon about the town’s story, a story that’s more than just about football. [Read the full article...]
Must Win - ‘Muck City,’ by Bryan Mealer
The New York Times Book Review – December 28, 2012 (Excerpt)
The “season with a high school team” genre has proved particularly durable since Buzz (then H. G.) Bissinger’s “Friday Night Lights” became the touchstone some two decades ago, generating its own branded feature film, television series and follow-up e-book. It set the standard for countless similar tales, most notably Michael Lewis’s “Blind Side” and the Academy Award-winning documentary “Undefeated.”
Bissinger’s sweeping if sometimes baggy and overwrought dispatch from what — for most readers — was a strange land established rules that are nearly as strict as a sonnet’s. A collection of disparate players, some poor, others better off, come together under the leadership of a charismatic coach, about whom the community, which puts far too much emphasis on football and is troubled in other ways as well, feels divided. Expectations are high, the team struggles and the transcendent athlete shines, but so does the less talented player with the big heart. Whether the team wins or loses the championship, surprisingly, is not that important. In fact, a failing season is perhaps even preferable to an unblemished run to the title, as there’s more conflict. (Optional subplot: Cheerleaders get their hearts broken but find academic success.)
“Muck City,” by Bryan Mealer, a former war reporter in Africa, follows this structure to the letterman. He wades into the rich, loamy soil — the title’s muck — of Belle Glade, Fla., historically a prodigious producer of crops (mostly sugar cane) and National Football League players, to spend a season with the Glades Central Raiders. [Read the full article...]
THE LONDONDERRY AIR
Testament of an Ulster Gunman
A Novel by Garrad Gawler
It all changed for Charles Cunningham, a Physics teacher at the local College of Technology in the County Derry town of Maddenstown, on a June afternoon in 1973 when a bomb exploded in his neighborhood. He answers an advertisement by the UDR, the Ulster Defence Regiment, but, in the time to come, he will experience the consequences of his decisions, and how his involvement complicates matters with family and friends, Protestants and Catholics alike, to an unexpected degree.
With “The Londonderry Air – Testament of an Ulster Gunman” Garrad Gawler describes in minute detail and with an astonishing level of authenticity not only the inner workings of the Ulster Defence Regiment, but also the activities of underground paramilitary groups of regular citizens who planned and carried out the assassination of suspected Republican terrorists in their neighborhood.
The Londonderry Air is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon Kindle (US), Amazon.co.uk, Amazon Kindle (UK), Barnes & Noble, smashwords.com, and any other good bookstore.
For more information on Garrad Gawler and to read an excerpt of “The Londonderry Air,” please see the author’s section on this website.
