TEXAS CELEBRITY TURKEY TROT

by Peter Gent ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 28, 1978

Gent, former Dallas Cowboys football star, obviously knows what he's talking about in this first-person portrait of Texas football hero Mabry Jenkins, a 30-year-old defensive back with bad knees and a hankering to stay in the limelight. It's all machismo and pathos, with Jenkins and his teammates fighting battered joints and onrushing middle age to keep their places on the team. When the worst happens and Jenkins is cut from the squad, he tags along with childhood friends--rodeo luminary Luther Watt and his wife, Nadine, for whom Jenkins has had a passion since the seventh grade--holding fast to his slipping celebrity through a series of Pro-Am junkets, golf tournaments, and fish frys (peopled by a covey of larger-than-life Texas rich folks). ""You ain't going to get to do it over again,"" Luther says to Mabry. And Mabry thinks: ""To Luther, the rest of my life was to be an unending series of off-season jobs. I wanted to cry."" But Luther is proved wrong, as this raunchy novel progresses--rough, tough, sometimes crude, and always ringing true. Gent has captured the nature of a football team and its members, complete with the Damoclean sword of retirement hanging over the whole bunch.

Pub Date: Sept. 28, 1978

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Morrow

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1978

Categories: FICTION