The Sweet Season centers around a group of overlooked girls who are shaped into a softball team led by an aging coach with a stubborn belief in effort. Where did the idea for this novel come from?

As a high school football player who had the great fortune to play on a very successful team, the book began as an ode to all the coaches who spend countless hours coaxing the best out of young athletes. However, early on I realized that while Coach’s character was a critical component, the story needed to be told from the point of view of the players and I elected to go with teenage girls since they often must confront life’s many challenges, both on and off the field, much earlier than teenage boys. Similarly, I decided to build the story around a softball team, not only because girls are more commonly engaged in this sport but also because it’s a very strategic game that requires its players to make many critical decisions on an inning-by-inning, game-by-game, basis. So, I crafted a disparate group of overlooked girls who, with the aid of their aged coach, find not only themselves and each other but also something none of them ever expected—they become a team, an entity separate and apart from their individual selves, an entity that accomplishes more than any of them ever dreamed possible.

How does sports fiction allow you to explore character in ways that other genres might not?

When you show up for a team sport, you’re immediately confronted with issues and problems that can often be ignored in everyday life. Suddenly, your effort and dedication matter. If you don’t give it your best, then it’s not just you that suffers—all of your teammates will suffer as well. Each member of any team needs to put in considerable time and effort, not only to improve their own skills but also to find the best way to help their teammates improve their skills. In the Sweet Season, I explore this dynamic through characters like Jessee, an exceptional athlete who learns that helping her teammates is far more productive than criticizing them; and Fee, an exceptional student who learns that despite her lack of athleticism, there are ways she can help the team succeed; and Bebe, a dedicated member of a very conservative church who learns that leading by example is far more productive than imploring others to see the world through the same religious lens that she does.

Cat becomes the emotional center of the story. When did you realize how important she would be to the novel?

I live in a town with a large immigrant community from Somalia and I once attended a lecture from a member of that community who described his incredible overland march from his burned-out village to a refugee camp and ultimately to America. Although I had initially conceived the Cat character as an outsider, casting her as an immigrant who practices a religion utterly foreign to most girls who have grown up in a small midwestern town allowed me to delve even deeper into prejudices built around race, religion and culture, all of which evaporate when the evil you don’t know becomes the person you do know. Cat’s courageous ability to overcome the crippling adversities that her family endured, as well as her own fears, becomes the lodestar that ultimately unites her teammates.

What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?

My first book, Morocco, A Remembrance of Childhood, Colonialism and the Cold War, is a memoir covering my early childhood years growing up as the son of a U.S. Navy officer and airplane pilot in a very foreign country, while The Sweet Season is centered on adolescence. Logically, my next book should focus on my adult years working as a corporate lawyer. However, I’m not John Grisham and I apparently lack the creativity to extract an interesting story from that time of my life. Instead, I’m currently crafting a novel centered on a widowed writer living alone in a small town in Northern Michigan who bumps into a middle-aged woman who shows far more interest in him than would appear warranted. Following this chance encounter, their budding relationship is disrupted by a murder that jeopardizes both of their futures. On the way to its surprising conclusion, the book will delve deeply into the small town’s historical past and the many ways in which this past has colored the lives of the man and woman at the narrative’s center. Just your average historical novel, mystery story, and court room drama, focused on an unlikely relationship that may or may not blossom. My target date for publishing is sometime during the summer of 2027.

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