Carl Sandburg!
Yesterday I finally held Carl Sandburg in my hands, more than a year after I first agreed to write a long biography of the well-loved poet. Leafing through the 112-pages filled me with wonder at the fact that that the book was finished. Reading the poetry, articles, letters and speeches of Carl Sandburg for this in-depthy biography was one of the most interesting projects I've done. He was so eloquent and funny and such a patriot. And with each chapter I had to write a detailed article about some historic, cultural or scientific phenomenon that was related to the time. For example, after the chapter in which two of Sandburg's brothers died of diphtheria, I wrote a sidebar about the disease. I think the side articles are an interesting way to provide insight and background into the time's of the subject.

Soccer Success in the South
Reviewed for Topdrawersoccer.com by Rebecca Thatcher Murcia

At Home on the Field
By Paul Caudros
HarperCollins, 2006 $22.95

Soccer fans love good stories, full of ironic details and surprising comebacks. Paul Cuadros has written a great soccer story in At Home on the Field, an uplifting tale of how three years after he fought tooth and nail to be allowed to start a boys’ high school in Siler City, North Carolina, the players, the majority of whom were undocumented Latino immigrants, won the state championship.
Cuadros, who was born in Michigan to Peruvian parents, went to North Carolina in 1999 to write about the changes underway in the state because of an influx of immigrants who work long hours for low pay in the poultry industry. He was surprised to find out that Jordan-Matthews, the high school in the small city of Siler, did not have a boys’ soccer team. Cuadros got involved in the local club soccer scene, and began the slow process of convincing the high school officials to allow him to coach a high school team. As soon as he started coaching, he worked hard to convert a group of kids who have mostly played street soccer into an organized, disciplined group that plays an attractive, possession-oriented style of soccer. But he is not just coach to these boys. He is also their tutor, their advocate, their chauffer and their taskmaster.
Cuadros reveals telling details, like the time he cut the best player on the team because the boy hit another player on the bus. We learn a lot about how these kids, whose parents often have little education and little English, struggle to remain eligible to play soccer. Cuadros is an advocate for immigrants and believes strongly in their rights, but he pulls no punches about how hard it is to teach kids whose very existence in this country is sometimes unlawful, that no cheating will be allowed when it comes to the strict eligibility rules of high school sports.
From the beginning, the boys are successful and venture deep into the post season, surprising everyone. But Cuadros is not content just to be regional champions. He keeps working hard to develop the players. He changes from the 4-3-3 formation with which they started and teaches them a 4-4-2. His fantastic starting goalkeeper goes to Mexico to visit his ailing grandmother, and Cuadros gives up on the young man making it back. But the young man manages to survive a long trek through the Arizona desert and shows up just in time to be eligible.
After three years of hard work, thrilling victories and agonizing defeats, the team finds itself in the final of the state championship against the high school team from Camp Lejeune, one of the biggest Marine Corps bases in the country. The opponents were strong and tall and strong and a perennial Eastern Division soccer power. The night before the game, one player, Indio, stays after practice to work a little extra, one-on-one with the coach. Cuadros wants Indio, one of the best players on the team, to try to get his shots off while the defender is still screening the keeper. This was one of my favorite parts of the book. After Indio finishes the extra practice, Cuadros philosophizes on the sad irony of the players’ illegal status. “On the field he was a gifted athlete, one who inspired adoration because of his talents, and he had a promising future,” Cuadros writes. “But once he stepped off the field, beyond its blue lines, he became illegal—an animal to be hunted down and deported. This is the way the country saw him.”
The next day Indio scores a beautiful goal, from 25 yards out, to help his team defeat Lejeune, 2 to 1. With the Lejeune star goalkeeper near post, Indio rips a fantastic cannon ball of a shot that goes over the goalkeeper’s head and inside the right post. “It is a professional shot, a killer of teams, the kind of shot that makes the highlight reels and is paused, rewound, and played over and over for its sheer energy, its boldness, its strength and fury,” he wrote.
This book is similar to some other well-written, entertaining books about soccer teams, such as The Beautiful Game: Sixteen Girls and the Soccer Season that Changed Everything and The Miracle of Castel de Sangro. But both of those excellent books were written by close observers of the teams. As the coach, Cuadros tells his compelling story in the first person, which brings a certain immediacy to the writing. The story is also not just about soccer. It is also a heart-warming story about how a community’s attitude toward newcomers changed in the course of three years. At the beginning, residents are fuming about the immigrants and attending an anti-immigrant rally sponsored by the KKK. Three years later, Hispanics in the area have gained some degree of acceptance and respect, perhaps in part due to the excellence of a ragtag bunch of boys and their determined coach.