Winning the City

Weesner ( The Car Thief ) nurses a wispy plot into an unexpectedly affecting novel. Dale Wheeler, a junior high school student living in Detroit of the recent past, loves basketball. Dreaming of leading his team to the city championships, he has spent a summer alone, practicing tirelessly. But then his team gets a new sponsor, a former college athlete bursting with satisfaction at his attainment of middle-class success--he is plant supervisor of the car factory where Dale's alcoholic, single father works, and his sons have won the Soap Box Derby. This paragon's very sneakers seem to Dale to ``reek of power,'' but the guy does not play fair: to ensure his sons' positions and prestige on the team, he drops Dale from the roster. As Dale's father promises to sober up between hasty moves to new apartments, and while Dale's affluent classmates gradually ostracize him, the put-upon hero scrambles toward elusive glory with another team and toward hard-won home truths. Weesner's characterizations are thoroughly convincing. His lifelike protagonist will have the reader cheering. (July)