A powerful story about football but so much more. Who would ever leave a dream NFL job? However, after the death of a friend, everything is called into question. It is only when he takes a position in his hometown that he begins to learn what truly matters, and the impact one person can have o. The world.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Good story... the telling is where it drops off. I appreciate Lowe's work with young people and his dedication to the sport he loves. He has several parts of his story that just jump off the page. Yet, some parts of the book fall into a repetitive cycle: anecdote, lesson learned. And there's some dives into the minutia of the sport that kept me a little tuned out. I DNF'd at about 50%.

HOMETOWN VICTORY, by Keanon Lowe & Justin Spizman, is the memoir of Keanon Lowe, a gifted college athlete who fell into coaching after graduation. He quickly found himself an assistant in the NFL, but found his calling in his mid-20's to become head coach at Parkrose High School. Parkrose had lost twenty-three straight games when Lowe takes over and Lowe had to find a way to cultivate hope in a group of young men that are accustomed to losing on the field and in life. As Lowe finds his way as a coach and connects to his players in ways no adult ever has, the Parkrose team begins to shed their past and find that by loving and caring for each other, their team can become greater than all of it's parts. Lowe finds a beautiful balance between compassion and toughness that few coaches find.
From beginning to end, I found myself completely entranced by this book. The reader is taken on the journey of head coaching discovery that Lowe is going through as a first timer. Emotional highs and lows are felt all along the way and those challenges are a lot of fun to read about. The writers intertwine some thoughts on how to live and how to find happiness. By the end of the book, I audibly cheered every challenge met and win captured by the Parkrose football team. Lowe's presence at Parkrose also had another wonderful result described in the book and is the reason why the reader might know his name before reading this book, but I will leave that part for the reader to find.
HOMETOWN VICTORY is written with a soothing rhythm and recreates events with clarity and exacting specificity, but without extra words and unnecessary supplementation that would only bog down the book. A pleasure to read, this book left a smile on face long after I finished reading it.