Joseph Rantz started life as a normal kid in a normal working class family. All that changed when his mother died and his father remarried. Joe's step mother didn't like him, and by the time Joe was 15, he was kicked out of the house and fending for himself. He managed to earn enough money to go to one semester at Washington University, where he tried out for the rowing team. His hope was that if he got on the team he would be able to also get a job working in the athletic department and earn enough money to stay in school. The place on the rowing team lead him to more than a job; it eventually lead to a gold medal in the 1936 Olympics. More importantly it taught him that he could trust people and risk being part of something again.When this book first came out in 2015 it got a lot of attention from review journals. It is a well written and inspirational story of young men who get through life by working together and pushing themselves. I actually didn't like it quite as well as Steve Sheinkin's Undefeated. Brown's descriptions of Joe's struggles and the team's efforts to pull together are great, but his attempt to tie it in with all that was going on with the rise of Hitler is a bit tenuous. Still, it is a engaging book, and I never got bored reading it. It would be a good choice for a junior high-age-boy who is a reluctant reader but likes sports and has to read a historical nonfiction book. (or for adults who were kind of interested in the original version, but don't want to wade through 400 pages of a sports narrative.)(2015, 240 p.)
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