Fall River Dreams: A Team's Quest for Glory-A Town's Search for Its Soul

This is A Book About Youth and what time does to it, about fathers and mothers and sons and daughters, about an American town in search of its past, where the high school basketball team carries a century's worth of dreams into each game.
Fall River, Massachusetts, became famous for Lizzie Borden, the wealthy spinster accused of axe-murdering her parents in the 1890s. Then, Fall River was a small but prosperous city, fueled by the 140 mills that made it the world's leading textile center. Immigrants from Ireland, Canada, England, Portugal, Lebanon, and elsewhere settled there, all pursuing the American dream, striving to attain one of the Victorian homes in the city's prestigious Highlands.
But the mills began to close after World War I, and today Fall River is like many American towns, struggling with a changing economy: the mills are empty monuments, unemployment is high, crime and school drop-out rates are rising.
Each autumn, however, the Durfee High School basketball team revives Fall River's dreams. In this lyrical, deeply felt, unforgettable book, Bill Reynolds spends a season with the kids, coaches, families, teachers, and fans of Durfee basketball. Game by game, Reynolds traces the unique history of the team and the town - a history that brings both joy and grief to thirteen teenaged boys and the coach who guides them. From the star to the supporting players to the little-used benchwarmer, we watch the team come together; and, with each victory or loss, we see the town live or die a little, a larger mirror to the team's destiny.
Fall River Dreams joins the few special books - including Friday Night Lights, A False Spring, and Heaven Is a Playground - that explore the intense, fleeting romance of sports and youth, against the backdrop of an aging, less-promising America. Readers who accompany the Durfee team on its annual quest will find their own dreams rekindled by this book.