This is not a book from the man-adventure genre, and I'm the fourth one in my family to read it, which means that it is not really a soccer book, even thought it uses soccer as a focus. This is a nonfiction work. It has to do with Clarkston,Georgia, and the remarkable number of refugees from various cultures who are disposed of there, or who are at least making their first stop in the U.S. there. Unlike so many other areas of refugee resettling, this is not just one new culture that is trying to blend into American and have America accommodate it, this is about 50 cultures, and the one thing they have in common is soccer. The author follows a Jordanian woman, Luma Mufleh, who has abandoned her own well-to-do family in Jordan to live in the U.S., but they disowned her, leaving her to fend for herself. She saw soccer coaching as a way to make a contribution, and it pulled her into a lifetime commitment of involvement with the refugees. Her club is the Fugees. Clarkston had been a homogeneous white enclave until the refugees arrived, so the assimilation of them was resisted by the locals. St. John follows a number of characters over the course of a couple years. If this subject strikes your interest, it is a good true life character study that is worth the time.
West Coast Don (writing from Fassardi, Paraguay)
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