Review by Booklist Review
On November 8, 2018, Rick Prinz, the head football coach at Paradise High School in California, texted his 26-member team that he was not canceling practice, despite a sky filled with smoke and falling embers. With the situation worsening, neither he nor anyone else was able to show up. Utter chaos followed as the most destructive fire in California history decimated the town of Paradise. This is a story about a resilient football team whose members overcame tremendous obstacles (trauma, homelessness) and forged an unbreakable bond to fight their way back to an unbeaten 2019 regular season and a spot in the playoffs. Veteran Los Angeles Times sports columnist Plaschke masterfully captures the passion and suffering of the players, coaches, and athletic director Anne Stearns, all of whom find purpose as a diverse band of brothers and sisters (the kicker in 2018 was a girl), pulling one another and their community together. This is a powerful and inspirational sports story about healing and finding humanity in devastating circumstances. With a movie in the works, expect the book to be popular with readers cheering for a team who gave their all. "Go Bobcats!"
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
Tucked into the northern California foothills, the small town of Paradise made international headlines in 2018 when it was essentially destroyed by wildfire. In the wake of the heartbreaking devastation, Paradise's high school football team and coach became the town's unexpected source of hope. Sports journalist Plaschke, a longtime columnist for the Los Angeles Times, went to Paradise for the 2019 football season and watched as the young players, many experiencing homelessness and separation from their families, turned an unprecedented challenge into a reflection of Paradise's indomitable spirit. Plaschke's familiar, conversational writing style accommodates both tragedy and renewal, strongly conveying the gritty determination of the so-called "hillbilly" little town that lost nearly everything. For its coverage of the unexpected horror of a natural disaster that took almost 100 lives, and of a season that helped to redefine Paradise, Plaschke's account will stand as the foremost record of a team's and a town's unvanquished spirit. VERDICT Told with clear-eyed honesty, this story of unfaltering purpose will resonate beyond a sports-loving readership. Already optioned for a film treatment, Plaschke's intense and inspiring account of a town's loss and will to recover is recommended for all public library collections.--Janet Davis, Darien P.L., CT
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A Los Angeles Times columnist follows the Paradise High School football team through its first season after the 2018 Camp Fire leveled its Northern California town. Inevitably, this book will be compared to Buzz Bissinger's Friday Night Lights, but its story has more inherent drama. While the Camp Fire disaster has been skillfully reconstructed by others--including Lizzie Johnson in her recent Paradise--Plaschke focuses on the football team and athletic staff, especially the 60-year-old head coach, Rick Prinz. A former youth pastor who had planned to retire, Prinz stayed on after coming to believe with near-messianic zeal that his team could help the town recover by continuing to play its smash-mouth, championship-seeking brand of football, which traditionally had united residents ("Everyone around here needs hope….We're going to try to be that hope," he said). En route to what became an undefeated regular season in 2019, the team faced monumental odds. First the coaches and players, on gridlocked exit routes, fled a terrifying inferno that killed 86 people, some burned alive in their vehicles. All but three players lost their homes and scrambled to find makeshift living quarters, some as far as 90 minutes from Paradise. Then the team had to practice on a lot strewn with rocks and potholes in Chico and a home field with a "partially melted scoreboard." The calamities left traumatized players with physical and emotional burdens ranging from anger and sadness to full-blown PTSD. Unlike Bissinger, Plaschke doesn't delve into the morality of an obsession with winning (which, in this case, involved letting members play with a torn ACL and other injuries). Yet he's a graceful and perceptive writer whose book works on its own terms, and because he tells a story with more big-picture stakes than that of Friday Night Lights, some readers may find it even more engaging. A moving and well-told account of how a battered team regrouped after catastrophic losses. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
