Kent Babb- Across The River: Life, Death, and Football in an American City

There are two New Orleans: the glamorous party city that tourists see and the day-to-day reality of the heavily segregated Black neighborhoods outside the French Quarter. That more real New Orleans is defined by economic inequality, street violence, drugs, and institutional racism. For the young people born and raised there, it is the land of no opportunity—indeed, many struggle just to survive to adulthood.

One of the few paths to success for teenage boys is football, which offers a way out with the promise of college scholarships and the possibility of a lucrative pro career. But it is too easy for even the most talented high school players to get off track when faced with the fraught daily reality of life. It takes a special person to guide these young men away from preordained failure and toward success—and even to keep them alive. In Algiers, on the West Bank of the Mississippi River, that person is Edna Karr High School coach Brice Brown.

Award-winning sportswriter Kent Babb first told the inspiring story of Brice Brown in the Washington Post. Now, in ACROSS THE RIVER: Life, Death, and Football in an American City (HarperOne), Babb goes deeper, widening the narrative with intimate portraits of Brown’s players, staff, and surroundings in an ever-tested community. Blending aspects of such disparate classics as Friday Night Lights, The Yellow House, and Ghettoside, Babb’s accomplished multi-character narrative illuminates many lives and captures the pulse of New Orleans in all its turbulence, complexity, and defiance.

About the Author

Kent Babb covers sports for the Washington Post and is the author of Not a Game: The Incredible Rise and Unthinkable Fall of Allen Iverson, which in 2016 was shortlisted for the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing. Babb’s journalism has received national praise; he has won more than a dozen awards from the Associated Press Sports Editors, and his work has been featured three times in the Best American Sportswriting series. He lives outside Washington, D.C., with his wife and daughter.