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Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland
HarperCollins
January 2007
On Sale: January 23, 2007
272 pages
ISBN: 0060823186
EAN: 9780060823184
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Biography
Somewhere
beyond the circle of money, glitz, drugs and controversy that
characterizes professional sports in America, there exists
the remnants
of the ideal. In Iowa, that ideal survives in the form of
high school
wrestling, a way of transforming the local virtues—modesty,
privation,
hard work—into sporting glory. To be a wrestling champion in
Iowa is to
achieve greatness—individual glory where the only back to
pat is your
own. For Jay Borschel and Dan LeClere, though, the
stakes
have been raised. Already three-time state champions in
differing
weight classes, each boy has a chance in his senior year of
high school
to do something historic—to become a "four-timer," joining
the most
elite group in the sport and essentially ensuring his status
as an Iowa
wrestling deity. For Jay, a ferocious competitor who feeds off
criticism and doubt, a victory would mean vindication over
the great
mass of skeptics waiting for him to fail. Dan, the kid from
a farm near
the tiny town of Coggon (population 710), carries other
burdens. For
his community, for the hard-driving coach who doubles as his
father,
and for his own triumph over his personal demons, another
title is the
only acceptable outcome. As the two boys approach
the finals
in a series of increasingly tense and hard-fought matches,
Jay and Dan
reveal the forces that drive young men through a grueling
routine of
early-morning and late-night workouts, social isolation, and
starvation
diets—and the rewards of the wrestling life. But in the
finals, a
victory is the only answer; blow that chance at a fourth
title, before
the fanatical crowds at the giant state tournament in Des
Moines, and
you will be little noted nor long remembered.
Four Days to Glory is the story of America as told through its small towns and
their
connection to sport, the way it was once routinely
perceived—a way of
mattering to the folks next door.
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