Grade: A
Offside Chance by
Mercy Celeste is the third in the
Southern
Scrimmages series and the author suggests that the books be read in order:
Six Ways from Sunday,
Sidelined, and finally
Offside.
The books deal with professional American football players
and homosexuality, a combination that was popping up in the news during the
season and will probably be cropping up fairly regularly now that pro athletes
are coming out of the closet.
Six Ways from Sunday
has to do with an NFL tight end and a career Marine who fall in love even
though they can't be together as much as they like. When the Marine is captured and presumed
dead, the football player thinks his life has ended. But has it?
Not answering that question but moving on to book two, Sidelined. In this book, a successful quarterback is cut
from his team and decides to go back to his hometown where he hopes to figure
out his twisted life. Jude, his lawyer brother,
persuades him to help coach the new high school's football team, made up of
students from previously rival high school teams. The head coach? Once the quarterback's high school rival.
Celeste constructs interesting and elaborate plots, and Offside is no different from her
previous books. Here Jude, the lawyer, moves
back to New Orleans to look after Levi's house, but is surprised to find a
hulking football player, Levi's best friend, already ensconced there.
William Slater is standing on the edge of a breakdown since
his house burned down, his contract is about to expire, and Levi has turned out
to be someone he barely recognizes. His
refuge in Levi's house is compromised, however, when Levi's brother Jude
appears. Initially, the only thing they
seem to bond on is how perplexed they are about Levi declaring himself flamboyantly
gay.
As they're holed up together during a freak snowstorm in New
Orleans, the self-declared low-brow Slater and the decidedly upper-brow Jude
must make compromises in order live without killing each other. That they do, only to discover two surprising
things: they're sexually and eventually totally attracted to each other, and
someone is trying to kill them.
Of all the Southern Scrimmage characters, I like Slater and
Jude the best. Both of them are no
nonsense guys whose worlds have changed dramatically in just a few months. Unlike the high maintenance Levi or the first
book's couple, Slater and Jude try to roll with the punches and then figure out
where to go from there.
But these new rounds of punches have nearly KO'd them. They can't rely on Levi or his boyfriend for
support, and since they're boxed in the house in New Orleans, they are sitting
ducks for the killer.
In addition, Celeste brings up the very real question of
what guys in their thirties who are kicked out of their careers are supposed to
do with the rest of their lives. Slater
has no idea, and his quandary and floundering are probably typical to all pro
athletes whose bodies can't sustain them more than a decade. Having someone like level-headed Jude in his
corner makes the transition less debilitating.
Slater for all his physical strength definitely needs Jude for his
mental and emotional support.
Fortunately, unlike in the previous books, Celeste is more
grounded here, and the book doesn't rely on a dramatic (and somewhat
unbelievable) surprise. Instead this is
the totally believable story of two guys burdened with family who must play the
hand they were dealt or walk away from the table. That they both play and play well makes the
story totally enjoyable.
