In The Coach, the newest novel from author Tom Speaker, follow “Dart” Darnell through eight years of playing elementary, middle school, and high school basketball, four army years during WWII, four years of playing college basketball, and forty-one years of coaching.
Coach with him, not just through the X and O’s, but the ecstasy of winning, the lessons learned from losing, and the joy of his experiences as he sees young kids grow to success in basketball, but more importantly grow to be successful in life and becoming good fathers and family men.
Make the decisions with him as he balances the opportunities of coaching success with the most important successes in life of being a good husband, father, and Christian.
This is the story of a group of young men and their coaching staff that tasted the bitterness of defeat the prior year and vowed individually and collectively to do everything in their power to wipe the feeling of defeat from their minds and hearts.
The history of this season does not start in 2009; it starts with West Lafayette’s football team becoming competitive in 2005. Each year after that, they became even more competitive until November 28th, 2009 at about 3:00 p.m., when they became “THE UNDEFEATED” and the State Champions in Indiana 3A football.
We begin this book with the first day of the week before the championship game, and it continues through the replay of the championship game. To get to the championship game, the book will discuss all those involved in this incredible story: coaches, players, administration, parents, fans, and all those that gave the team the necessary support for the successes that will be remembered by this community forever. Finally, we end our story with the “Fruits of Victory” and a look to the future for both the young men graduating, and those who will return next year to see if “history can repeat itself.”
This book can be purchased and signed by Tom Speaker for $26.00 + $6.00 for shipping. Email Tom at [email protected]
Author, Tom Speaker takes readers through the sometimes excruciating, always hilarious ways an eighteen year old, sheltered and somewhat spoiled boy almost single-handedly brings our U.S. Army to its knees, waving the white flag of surrender.
But there is hope for our “hero” as he matures, falls in love and suffers heartbreaks. Finally, his deep love for a beautiful native Hawaiian girl, Mercedes Mia, causes him to move from immaturity and selfishness to maturity and unselfish love. With her help, he turns to God and realizes with God, nothing is impossible.
In The Battle of Waikiki, follow Mike Teague as he stumbles through the necessities of the army and lives the adventures, sports, history, young love and beauty of our fiftieth state.
This novel also relates the story of this young man’s religious growth, which the author wanted included, because of the author’s admiration for Father Damien, the “leper priest.” Included in the story is a story of Father Damien who volunteered to go to the leper colony on Molokai, where the outcasts of Hawaiian society, the “lepers” were cast with little concern for their physical or spiritual needs.
Father Damien changed the culture of the leper colony from a “survival of the fittest” to a civilized, God fearing society with a school, hospital and church. In doing this, he died a martyr, as he contacted leprosy after seventeen years of ministering to these outcasts.
After writing this novel a wonderful coincident occurred, which made narrating the love of Father Damien for the outcasts of society, an even more meaningful endeavor. Father Damien was declared a “Saint” by the Vatican and was canonized on October 11, 2009. Today he is the “Patron Saint of Hawaii.”