Book Description

A Few Yards Shy of Heaven smothers the canvas with a litany of hues that convey the mastery football has on its fans, players, and coaches. Beyond entertainment, the game possesses the ability to completely altar rational thought. Although it crosses various levels of achievement, the heart of the game beats strongest at the high school level, where pageantry is by-product of town identity. A Few Yards Shy of Heaven details one aberrational championship football season for the people of South Heaven, Ohio. In 1980, South Heaven is struggling to overcome hardships and a deplorable economy that is forcing family-owned business to close, pushing unemployment to record high levels, and creating a general malaise of sorrow. The people find resolute escape in the unexpected and amazing success of their hometown Rangers. Melvin Wright is an outsider and young reporter assigned by a large Cleveland paper to cover South Heaven. Although his professional task is to write a story on the closure of the auto plants, Wright allows his personal agenda to overwhelm logic; expressive resentment toward the people of western Ohio. Wright holds the people responsible for his recent assignment to nowhere, and possesses an awkward sympathy for those in South Heaven desperate to leave. Mostly from spite, he develops an appetite for the surreal fascination the South Heaven faithful have in their team, despite a lack of a viable economic future. As days turn into weeks, Wright cannot avoid misfortune, and as such, cannot leave western Ohio. He is forced to endure a football season in small town America. However, as those weeks turn into months, Wright is transformed spiritually and begins to wallow in that same surrealism, only he discovers that the fascination is not about football but more about the sensation of home and small town life.