Winning Passion: A Contemporary Novel of Courage

Taciturn football coach Bobby Thompson accepts a job at a high school in a small Texas town. When Thompson decides to make a black player the team's starting quarterback, the die-hard football-fan townspeople do not respond charitably. Thompson's personality is never well-drawn: he claims that his wife is ``both his lover and his best friend,'' but Priddy rarely shows them in civil conversation, and Thompson not only doubts his wife's fidelity but has over the years ignored her desire to attend law school in favor of his coaching career. He occasionally fantasizes about sex with his female students but is self-righteously horrified when he discovers that a local businessman is actually having an affair with one. Plot structure in this first novel is awkward, and events are often foreshadowed in a heavy-handed way, i.e., Thompson wonders about the strange circumstances of the former coach's departure, and it turns out there was some evil-doing behind it. On the other hand, scenes involving the booster club--made up mainly of local businessmen who take the high school games extremely seriously--have an easy authenticity to them. (Dec.)