“A brilliant, fearless look at the savage rites of passage that exist in the fraternity of American sports . . . gripping and unforgettable.” —Dennis Lehane, author of Mystic River
 
In 1964, seventeen-year-old Billy Dyer is a newcomer to Oleander, a Gulf Coast Florida town whose old guard define football as the ancient Spartans did their Agoge. It is a mode of brutal tutelage that forges the hearts and minds of the town’s elite youth for a future of power. Billy’s parents are recently divorced and he lives in a bad neighborhood with his secretive, alcoholic father.
 
Through the brutal and fiery days of summer practice, Billy fights for a starting spot on the team, the Spartans. He makes the team, but in a horrific hazing scene far from the town, he rebels and in the process badly injures his rival for the flanker position. The events that follow force Billy into exile from football, then later back into the game when powerful men realize that the Spartans cannot win without him.
 
“Fighting in the Shade is less a sports novel than a coming-of-age story wound around a mystery, with football as symbol and symptom.” —St. Petersburg Times
 
“A powerful, beautifully written book about attitudes and practices that we want to believe are safely in the past. Instead, as Watson reminds us, corruption and cruelty survive through their uncanny ability to take on new shapes.” —Laura Lippman, New York Times–bestselling author
 
“High school football mixes with Faust in this blitz of a novel from Watson . . . a big Dennis Lehane-like story of society, opportunity, and consequences, revealing Watson as an accomplished storyteller.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review