RAIDERS NIGHT

When a hazing event at team camp leads to sexual abuse against a fellow player, co-captain and star running back Matt Rydek is caught in the middle. What do you do when doing the right thing would wreck the football program, get people arrested and cost him a Division One scholarship? In a sports novel that packs a wallop, Lipsyte takes readers into the dark corners of the locker room and Jock Culture and doesn’t let them look away. It’s a sordid tale of steroids and painkillers, racism and homophobia, bullies, and misguided businessmen and fathers. It’s a world where team overrides conscience, until Matt comes to know what he must do to set things right, even if it means losing everything he thought he had. An important work for the high-school athlete and anyone concerned about what sports might be doing to today’s kids. (acknowledgments) (Fiction. 14+)