Byron Graves’ debut novel is a slam dunk that joins stories like Friday Night Lights in depicting the alchemy of young people dreaming beyond their circumstances and working hard to change their lives.
Tre Brun wants to burn just as brightly as his deceased older brother Jaxon, who was a basketball supernova. That’s hard under the weight of his parents’ grief and the close-knit Ojibwe rez community that has seen so many stars flame out. But Tre is determined to not only help Jaxon’s friends on the varsity team win their first state championship this year, but also be the first person from the rez to make the NBA.
Girls and peer pressure to party prove to be potent distractions, not to mention the external and internal voices telling Tre and his teammates they’ll never amount to anything. Rez Ball (Heartdrum, $19.99, 9780063160378) powerfully shows how our communities can lift us up, but they can also disappoint us. Based on the real-life Red Lake Warriors that Graves played for as a high schooler in Minnesota, the novel is unsparing in showing the harsh realities and racism faced by young Native Americans. “We’ve been losing to the white man for five hundred years,” one of Tre’s teammates says during a climactic game. “The battles, the stolen land, the broken treaties, the way their cops hunt us down. We can finally have a victory.”
Rez Ball reverberates with passionate prose, dramatic turns and easy-to-root-for characters. Graves uses his vast pop culture knowledge to round out Tre with nods to comic book and sci-fi nerdery.
Like any good basketball game, Rez Ball contains nail-biter moments, incredible clutch plays, a whole lot of swagger and, more than anything, love. The heartbeat of Tre’s Ojibwe community beats like a dribbling basketball page after page in this uplifting and raucous debut.
