Don't Know Tough

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.

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I feel like I said too much here—I didn't give away any plot points (I don't think), but I still think I maybe said too much. I don't know how else to talk about this novel. Also, I don't think it matters what I say, just read the first two pages of Don't Know Tough and it won't matter what I put here—you're going to have to read the rest or will just walk away.

Either way, you're probably wasting time if you read this post when you could just read the @#$&! book.

WHAT'S DON'T KNOW TOUGH ABOUT?

Billy Lowe is a running back for a small-town Arkansas High School Football team. He's practically half the team by himself. They wouldn't be in the State Championship playoffs without him—and they won't win anything without him, either.

So when he gets himself in trouble—with the school and potentially the legal system—for repeatedly giving a beating to the son of one of the area's richest men, their first-year coach's dreams of glory are in jeopardy.

Then, the boyfriend of Billy's mother is found dead—likely murdered. Things go from dismal to worse.

BILLY

Billy has been valued for one thing in his life—he's a great football player. He's the son of a high school football legend. The younger brother of a phenomenal high school player. After High School, he will likely produce a few kids who will go on to be high school football players.

He's also the target of his mother's drunken and abusive boyfriend. Everyone living in their trailer is. Her boyfriend (Billy refuses to use his name) replaced the drunken abusive father and husband who abandoned them years ago.

His life is defined by football and abuse. Everything else is just filler.

It's no wonder then that Billy is full of rage and need for some kind of affection beyond his mother's imperfect attempts to express her love.

He doesn't know how to live. He doesn't know how to be an adult. He knows how to be hurt and how to hurt. We see that immediately in the first two pages—the next 320 are just the repercussions of that.

COACH TRENT POWERS

Coach Trent sees himself in Billy. His teenaged years featured several different Foster Homes until his high school coach brought him into his home and family and changed his life. He found stability, family, and Christianity. He went on to marry his coach's daughter.

Trent wants to copy and paste his experience onto Billy (except that whole marrying the coach's daughter thing—there's no way that Mrs. Powers would accept that). He has far less time to replicate that scenario than his coach had, but he still thinks he can make it work.

He fails to see the things that separate Billy and his teenaged-self. More importantly, he fails to see the differences between himself and his coach. He is earnest, idealistic, and desperate—he thinks he can impose success on the situation if he wants it enough, if he believes it enough.

At one point, Trent tries to evangelize Billy. It epitomizes this whole endeavor and is one of the more painful scenes in a novel that has an overabundance of painful scenes. I wanted to call a time-out, stop the scene and talk to Trent for a minute. This is not how you present the Gospel, sir, as if simply saying "Jesus" will solve every problem. Go read 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 and try again, stop rushing it. I think he's genuine, I think this is a heartfelt attempt on his part to help Billy, I am convinced that Trent thinks he's doing the right thing—but he's approaching the whole thing incorrectly.

Trent sees himself as the Evangelical Louanne Johnson/Jaime Escalante/Principal Joe Clark/Sister Mary Clarence mixed with Coach Eric Taylor, who will rescue this kid. Sadly, he's really just a combination of Ned Flanders and Michael Scott. I liked him, wanted him to succeed, and never thought for a moment he would/could, or should.

RACE

You hear football, the South, and Crime Fiction and you think this book is going to be about race/racism—at least in part. And you'd be wrong—as hard as that is to believe.

But you'd also be almost right. One of the more impressive things about Don't Know Tough is the subtle way it is and it isn't about race in the South.

SO, WHAT DID I THINK ABOUT DON'T KNOW TOUGH?

I was blown away by this. I should stop there before I go overboard with praise. But, I'm not going to. Feel free to stop reading now, though, I'm not going to improve on those six words.

I should probably start off by saying, as un-American as it is, I don't like football. I don't see why it's popular, I wish so many young people in this country wouldn't sign themselves up for the lasting physical and mental damage that it brings. I do not understand the religious fervor that grips fans of the sport—particularly in Texas and the South when it comes to high school and college teams. And frankly, I don't know that I want to.

But hey, Dani Rojas speaks for millions when he says, "Football is life." (even if he's talking about the other football). So bring on the books about it—especially if you're going to write them the way that Eli Cranor does. If you're going to give me something this good, I don't care what subculture, sport, or location it is—I'm going to lap it up.

As I stumbled through saying above, Don't Know Tough is about race, it's definitely about class and family. But it's primarily about being an adult, about being a man, and how one gets to that stage in life—about mentorship and being mentored. Both Trent and Billy find themselves in situations where they have a greater degree of responsibility than they're accustomed to or prepared for. Billy is thrust into it by his actions and other people's actions. Trent decides to take it upon himself. At the same time, everyone around them recognizes them as still being (essentially) children and treats them accordingly.

This is a novel about heartbreak, despair, about clinging to a dream as it crumbles around you (whether or not you realize that's what's going on). There is a sense of inevitability about everything that happens to Billy, Trent, and their families—even if any of them realized what was happening and tried to change things, it just wouldn't matter.

And all of it is told in prose that is beautiful, visceral, empathetic, and honest—I cannot convey to you the greatness of Cranor's writing properly. I'll either not be effusive enough in my praise, or I'll come across as over-hyping it. He invites the reader to think about Hemingway* as you read this—in terms of themes, story, and character—but I'd like to think I'd have gotten there on my own.

* The Old Man and the Sea in particular, but I think it's safe to bring other works into the conversation.

This is a brutal novel. As I read, I wanted it to end sooner than it did to just stop the suffering of these poor characters. But I wanted to read another couple hundred pages of Cranor's writing.

Reading Don't Know Tough is like watching a series of defensive highlights on the NFL Network—hit after hit after hit after bone-crushing hit. It will leave you psychically battered and bruised—and oddly wanting more.