The moving story of a Navajo high school basketball team, its members
struggling with the everyday challenges of high school, adolescence, and
family, and the great and unique obstacles facing Native Americans
living on reservations.
Deep in the heart of northern Arizona, in a small and isolated patch of
the vast 17.5-million-acre Navajo reservation, sits Chinle High School.
Here, basketball is passion, passed from grandparent to parent to child.
Rez Ball is a sport for winters where dark and cold descend fast and
there is little else to do but roam mesa tops, work, and wonder what the
future holds. The town has 4,500 residents and the high school arena
seats 7,000. Fans drive thirty, fifty, even eighty miles to see the
fast-paced and highly competitive matchups that are more than just games
to players and fans.
Celebrated Times journalist Michael Powell brings us a narrative of
triumph and hardship, a moving story about a basketball team on a Navajo
reservation that shows how important sports can be to youths in
struggling communities, and the transcendent magic and painful realities
that confront Native Americans living on reservations. This book details
his season-long immersion in the team, town, and culture, in which there
were exhilarating wins, crushing losses, and conversations on long bus
rides across the desert about dreams of leaving home and the fear of the
same.
