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Also by Mark Kreidler:

Four Days to Glory, January 2007
Hardcover

FOUR DAYS TO GLORY
By: Mark Kreidler

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.

Media Buzz

Early Show - January 25, 2007