Game Paperback – November 14, 2011

I moved away from my usual reads with this book, but the message and memories that it brought back to my day’s playing high school football in Oklahoma was awesome. Such a great author with the details he puts in a story.Awesome story

GAME is brutal and funny.It's salted with dialect that rings true to anyone who grew up in rural Oklahoma and probably other parts of the South and Midwest. The game plays may be too detailed for all but football fanatics, the E-book has a few formatting glitches, and a copy editor overlooked a few goofs, but I read right past them.GAME is set in the 1970s, with flashbacks to the `60s. The author depicts football as war, bringing out the best and worst of the combatants. Coach Donny Doyle comes to Tsalagee, Oklahoma as an assistant and becomes head coach of the Fighting Redmen, a team that wants mainly to beat arch rivals, the Hert City Trojans. The Trojans are defending state champions; their secret weapon is a ringer from Detroit who apparently plans to dismember the Redmen one by one.In a recurring nightmare, Coach Doyle is Lance Corporal Doyle again. It's 1968, Khe Sanh, South Vietnam. Checking out a village he enters a hut where a woman lies on the floor, apparently ill or injured.(Quote)He took off his steel pot, and knelt on one knee beside the woman ... When he felt her head it burned his fingers and he jerked his hand back. When he looked at his palm it smoked and stung."Doc!" he yelled and when he looked up Corpsman Meadows had appeared kneeling on the other side of the woman looking at him. "What's wrong with her?" he asked Meadows.Meadows shrugged and said, "Who knows. There's a thousand things can kill you in the Nam."(End quote)The phrase comes back to haunt Doyle as he learns a thousand things can kill you in a game of football. He remembers the day, fresh out of the military, when he applied for a football scholarship at Eastern Oklahoma A&M. In his interview, the head coach asks, "Why do you want to play football, Marine?" Doyle replies, "I like the combat." The coach gets Doyle and other freshman players on the field for a "two-a-day" to separate the men from the boys. Any reader who ever took part in or watched a football practice may break out in a sweat.Doyle's first year as head coach at Tsalagee shows promise and he gets an offer from a buddy in Tulsa. The Tsalagee school board comes up with all kinds of favors to keep him. That includes recruiting 3 ringers from Tulsa who are more gangster than athlete. The most talented of the three, and the hardest one to turn around, is a big bruiser named Leotis McKinley. And thereby hangs the tale.This book stirred up a raft of memories. It will go on my 2013 list of favorite books read.

Many reviews have said 'you don't have to like football to enjoy this book' and I suppose that's true. But loving HS football, and understanding plays being called and positions in the game make Truman's novel richer and a joy to read.With all respect to the real-life characters involved in "The Blind Side", "GAME" is the fictional, action filled, non-chick-lit alternative. Uplifting, inspiring without being maudlin.The synopsis is available, so I won't repeat the storyline...but the characters in GAME are what pull you in and keep you there, wrapped in small town Oklahoma high school football. From Coach Doyle to his young team members and especially his "recruits" with troubled lives, I found myself not only believing the characters but truly caring about them.I recommended this book to a friend remarking that, during the first few chapters, Truman does skip back and forth in time--but instead of finding it distracting, I learned the depth of each young man in the novel. Eventually and inevitably, GAME ends up on a high school football field, circa 1970s Oklahoma.This is an important note to some readers: I was nearly halfway through GAME before I recognized the absence of something; PROFANITY. Truman has written a book about HS football without finding a need to have anyone cursing. I'm no prude, but I found it remarkable that Truman has gathered all these men and boys in a sports setting and made it VERY realistic sans vulgarity. I mention it here, because it surely IS a book men and boys will enjoy, and you can feel safe in giving it as a gift to anyone from young adult on up.I LOVED "Game". It IS about football, but it's even more about heart, fellowship and deciding to control your own destiny.GAME is a touching, realistic sports oriented novel. An excellent, inexpensive Kindle book that I heartily recommend. This would be a great gift not only to the sports lovers in your family, but to those who enjoy a heartwarming tale of growth and spirit.

Classic American football story very well done. Too much detail unless you really know the game, which I don't. Enjoyed it.

Enthralling, captivating and thoroughly enjoyable.Written extremely well and such an interesting insight into a small town community football team

Great Book

Good Read..

Not for me.