This Love Is Not For Cowards: Salvation and Soccer in Ciudad Juárez (Bloomsbury), by Robert Andrew Powell.
I first came across Robert Andrew Powell’s beautiful book through an interview Carol Off did with the author on CBC Radio’s As It Happens. The Mexican city of Ciudad Juárez, just across the border from the U.S. has been brutalized by the drug wars there. Murder after murder, day after day. Powell spent a year there, tracking the ups and downs of the Indios the local soccer team, one that exists with profound meaning in the city’s agony. Wonderfully told, his story has the sort of observation and anecdote that explains so very much about the culture of the game and the role of a team in a place that is on the edges of hell. A truly gorgeous book about hope, love, loyalty and despair.
