In the previous comic, The book opens with Earl Tubbs leaving a message on the phone for someone and driving a truck to his dad's old place that his Uncle Buhl had been living in until he had to go to a nursing home. Now the place needs to be cleaned out and Earl who hasn't been to Craw County in a very long time is there to do this one job. Years ago when Earl's daddy was Sherrif he cleaned up the town with just a baseball bat. Earl runs into someone he used to know at the local ribs joint named Dusty who's in trouble with the Coach and who has sent Esau to deal with the problem. But Earl won't let that happen and he attacks Esau and saves Dusty's life who isn't all that grateful. Earl goes home and meets a kid in his tree hoping to watch TV who quickly runs away and Earl tried to chop down the tree that hangs over his father's grave with no success. Then Earl goes to the football game and Dusty comes out from the woods half-dead looking to talk to the Coach. Dusty dies overnight and Earl tries to talk to the Sherrif but that gets him nowhere because the Sherrif is in the Coach's pocket. He goes to his dad's home and there\s a lightning storm and he yells at the sky that he's leaving that he wants to have nothing to do with this. Then he looks down at the tree that is no longer there and what was left of it was what resembled a bat. He saw this as a sign and set out to make things right in Craw County. But the Coach uses the bat on him and kills him with it. And the person he was calling at the beginning of the story was his black daughter.who is in the military on her way home to him;
This next book in the series concentrates on the Coach's life and it gets to so you almost feel sorry for him. He hasn't had an easy life; His father sold moonshine and was a thief and a sonofabitch; who paid him no mind; But he was determined to become a linebacker for the high school team, the Rebels, He practiced daily on the filed trying to make something of himself but the boys just laughed at him and beat him up. Then an old blind black man named Big took an interest in him and began to train him and he got better and the black defensive side of the team said he could be on the team because they respected Big and if Big said the kid was ok than he was ok. And he became the best lineman in the history of the school.
But no colleges called to offer deals to go there to play. He couldn't figure it out. The best he could get was being a ball boy for the high school football team. But that wasn't good enough and he set out to find a way to get something better; At the beginning of the book, he remarks that Earl wasn't the first person he'd killed. So who else did he kill, perhaps to get ahead?
Coach is a complicated man; You start off hating him from the first book. But you can't help but feel sorry for the child who tries so hard and gets his teeth shoved down his throat by the boys at school, by his father, by society. He doesn't stand a chance without Big\s help. It's truly sad; But he becomes a monster that even Big cannot stand; This is such an incredible series and I love how they tackle the South's religion, aka football. The book opens with a forward from a Carolina Panther football player whom half of it doesn't make any sense since it's in football jargon. But it was fun to read; I give this book five out of five stars;
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