If you invest in the characters, this book will transport your mind to distant reaches.
The year is 2006...
A productive 500-acre traditional farm on the Great Plains of western Nebraska is where affable one-armed patriarch John Jenkins and his devoted wife Barbara have raised their family. Two of their offspring are grown and have departed the farm, making divergent choices that will dramatically impact the rest of their lives. Beautiful former cheerleader and apple of her father's eye Dee D. travels to Lincoln, where she will attend college on an academic scholarship and soon have her relatively naïve mindset turned topsy-turvy by first love and harsh adult realities. Unsettled, disgruntled older brother Chad rashly enlists in the army and will encounter battlefield horrors in the wasteland of Afghanistan.
Ricardo Ramirez is a football prodigy, raised by a single father in an impoverished barrio south of downtown Los Angeles. Pursued by gridiron goliaths across the land, he accepts a scholarship to the University of Nebraska, where he will join frustrated head coach Rod Rolniak in attempting to resurrect the storied Cornhusker program to previous lofty national heights. Rico's football hopes and love life will take unexpected dramatic turns. His father offers support while facing his own grinding problems back in L.A., while cousin and best friend Victor deals with his own challenges both on the home front and as a soldier fighting in the Iraq war.
Complex societal issues are interwoven throughout the narrative; hot button topics as relevant today as in the two-year span covered in the story. Controversial concerns are explored, such as widespread growth of GMO crops, corporate greed, forever wars/drone employment, PTSD-addled veterans, racial strife, NCAA athletes earning vast sums of money for their schools without commensurate compensation, substance abuse, and more*.
In its essence, "Swim A Crooked Line" celebrates family, coming-of-age, farming, and college football; taking an unvarnished look at modern-day America along the way.
*Kindly look elsewhere for vampires, zombies, werewolves, aliens, serial killers, secret agents, plagues, exorcisms, conspiracies, pygmies, or self-made billionaire/sadists.
