Reps

Set in 1982, REPS tracks its protagonist's final football season as a linebacker at a fictional southern major college. So that the reader may form context for the events that happen to Mike Hahka as of a day or moment, the narrative includes numerous segues from present to past: Like everyone, Hahka's present surroundings are continually informed by his prior experiences. However, the flashbacks and memories are not confusing to the reader. It's always clear when the narrator is speaking in the present or past tense. The stories and memories limn a realistic and gritty outline of the type of people who elect to survive and thrive in the midst of the institutionalized violence that is often major college football. However, the football explications are not intended as indictments of the game or its participants. The memories themselves make no value judgments - they are strict reportage of facts. It's left to the reader to engage in his/her own cost/benefit analysis. Broadly, the book mimics the process by which a football season unfolds. It begins slowly and painstakingly, as the fundamentals are revealed, rehearsed, and internalized. It gathers speed and momentum, takes on a distinct character, and concludes in a crescendo of heat, light, and fury. It has its own unambiguous conclusion and stands alone and distinct. Hahka, disillusioned and sick of the game, approaches his final season with dread and but one goal - to finish it without further catastrophic physical injury. When his team's best defensive player and Hahka's best friend, linebacker Stanley "Pepe" Renew, is injured during the season's first practice, Hahka gets thrust into a role he never sought or bargained for - that of de facto leader of the defense. When Hahka, proceeding on Pepe's advice, changes defensive calls during the season's first game, the coaching staff retaliates by threatening Hahka, Pepe, and Hahka's recently re-acquired girlfriend, Sandra Halsey, with extraordinary censure, unless Hahka disavows his actions and "plays ball" with the staff for the remainder of the season. During the meeting, the coaches disclose just enough to reveal that rumors regarding their underhanded activities are all too true. Faced with the promised censure no matter what he does (Hahka nor Pepe believe for a moment that the coaches will keep their end of the "bargain" and let Hahka and Pepe off scot free), Hahka conspires with Pepe and Sandra in a plan by which the athletes will gain access to all of their head coach's (Robert Cletus "Big Daddy" Barnett) secret records that reveal most of his illicit activities over the preceding two decades. The records seem unobtainable in that they are stored in Big Daddy's inner office behind two locked, alarmed doors in the basement of the University Field House, a building patrolled inside and out 24 hours a day. The plan grows in complexity as unknowns and variables keep popping up to frustrate Hahka and his band. A shadowy race group agrees to provide them security. A Northern lawyer agrees to represent them and help others who Big Daddy may have harmed. Hahka's physical condition is steadily eroded. And the whole plan may rely upon the actions of an out-of-town reporter. By the time Hahka and Pepe are ready to execute their plan's end game, the following conditions obtain: 1) Hahka's suffered the catastrophic injury he so dreaded; 2) It is the final Thursday night of the season; 3) The alumni are holding a heretofore unannounced cocktail party in Big Daddy's offices until the wee hours; 4) The race group is on the verge of committing two kidnappings in furtherance of the plan, and; 5) The out-of-town reporter has betrayed the conspirators. Clearly, the boys and their plan run into quite a few unpredicted circumstances. All of the above-described circumstances arise naturally and are resolved coherently and believably. Great care is taken that the reader need not suspend disbelief to remain inve