The Legend of Jesse Smoke

When the Washington Redskins name Jesse Smoke their starting quarterback, they become the first NFL team to sign a woman. Skip Granger, the team’s longtime assistant coach, narrates this epic tale set in an unspecified future. Granger discovers Jesse on a beach in Belize, throwing a regulation-size football 60 yards across the water with an arm stronger than John Elway or Tom Brady. He recounts how he convinced Jesse to try out for the team despite being under contract with the Washington Divas of the Independent Women’s Football League, and the story takes flight from there. In a likable and occasionally vulnerable voice, Bausch (Far As the Eye Can See) writes as if Granger were adding to the legend of Jesse Smoke, whom he states was already the subject of movies and other books. The author’s vision of the future reveals the present-day ugliness pervading American culture in matters of gender and sexual orientation. Bausch also provides vivid play-by-play game-day descriptions, a narrative tactic that might turn off some readers were the plot not so riveting. Despite an anticlimactic conclusion, the novel is an entertaining sports narrative bolstered by weightier issues for readers to contemplate. (Sept.)