At the opening of Bricktown Boys, Sam is on a quest to form a football team to play in the community league. Finding the players is challenging, but procuring a coach and the money for registration and equipment seems pretty much impossible. Sam is obsessed with the idea of a team because he loves football. And because football is better than the challenges of school. And, perhaps most important, because football will provide an escape from a home life that includes a drug-using mother with a new boyfriend who is clearly racist and may be violent as well. When the answer to Sam's search for a coach and funding comes in the form of Mrs. Coleman, the elderly lady from down the street who Sam has known since early childhood, he's not sure what to think of it. He's even less clear when Mrs. Coleman spends more time in bible readings than in drills and finds uniforms whose color can only be described as putrid. She names the team "The Bricktown Gospel." Of course.

The prospects for the team start getting rosy as football strategy, work ethic, a talented girl addition to the team, and Mrs. Coleman's prayer sessions come together. Things at home are spiraling downward, however, and soon devolve into more drug dealing and violence. Eventually, the hope Mrs. Coleman brought to The Gospel confronts the desperation of Sam's home life, and Sam learns complicated lessons about both life and the game he loves.

This was an excellent book showing how a team comes together for each other during a tough situation. Sam and his friends want to form a football team and their only possible coach is an elderly female neighbor of Sam’s. The team does well while the coach teaches them to play with dignity and “to fight for what is right.” Sam also has to deal with his mom’s abusive druggie boyfriend. When things get of out hand with the boyfriend, Sam has his team’s support and they are all there for him. Football has brought them together as a family. In the end, Sam ends up staying with Mrs. Coleman, the coach while his mom is in jail. Loved this book.

I read this book in one day. It will definitely appeal to middle school readers. Many will be able to relate to the struggles of the characters.

I would add Bricktown Boys by Pete Fanning to my teacher's classrooms. Middle grade students are always looking for new books about sports and this one will be a great fit for many of them with it's themes of friendship, racism, and domestic violence with the characters, Sam and Mrs. Coleman bringing humor, empathy, and care into the story.