Wrestling with honor

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

After baseball A Different Season and soccer Breakaway Run , Klass has turned to wrestling. Ron, the self-proclaimed ``straightest guy'' in his high school, feels his civil rights are being threatened when he has to take a drug test in order to compete on the wrestling team. But when the test unexpectedly indicates the presence of drugs, he refuses to take another one, and sits out the season. Ron becomes increasingly bitter and angry when others don't understand or sympathize with his moral stand. He blames the father he never knewand won't talk aboutwho was killed in Vietnam when he was an infant. The mystery of why he failed the drug test is cleared up the astute reader will have solved it long before, and Ron is allowed to wrestle again, but too late to qualify for a championship bout with Igor, his nemesis. Igor wins the champion's trophy, but won't go home until he's wrestled Ron. Once again, Klass creates a moving, emotionally involving story; readers will be cheering all the way through its excitingif manipulatedfinal scene. However, this book doesn't resonate the way Klass's last two did, and some of the charactersparticularly the two bad guysand climactic scenes bear the hallmarks of formulaic screenwriting. Ages 12-up. Oct.

School Library Journal

Gr 7-12 Ron Woods, captain of and driving force behind his high-school wrestling team, is the straightest kid in school. That's why everyone is surprised when Ron unwillingly submits to a mandatory drug test and tests positively for marijuana use. When barred from the wrestling team, most of his friends and teammates resent him for ruining their chances at the county tournament, and an athletic scholarship is on the line. While despondent over the whole mess yet still standing his ground, Ron lets the anger toward his father, killed in Vietnam when Ron was a baby, come into sharp focus. Eventually, he comes to terms with his father's death. It doesn't take an expert to figure out early on the clincher revealed at the end of the book: someone had switched vial samples for the drug test. The possibility of this happening is never considered. When Ron is cleared, he is still barred from the tournament, yet he beats his rival in a post-tournament bout. This is entertaining and thought-provoking despite its flaws. Most of the novel is effective and believable. Except for Ron's rival, who is over-exaggerated, character are clearly drawn. Ron is especially notable, as he dashes from a sexual encounter when he realizes that he is not ready and learns how to solve tough problems in his own way rather than giving up. The wrestling scenes are detailed and realistic. This book is good, but a more powerful story about a teenage boy taking a stand, also involving sports and learning to accept an untimely death, is Chris Crutcher's Running Loose Greenwillow, 1983. Diane P. Tuccillo, Mesa Public Library, Ariz.