This tale of youth and the immutable forces of society arrayed against its innocence and optimism has been called the best football novel in years.

I died exactly the way I lived.” So begins the astonishing story of C. P. (Corinthians Phillipians) McKay, a star football player and passionate student who loves poetry. C. P. is a young man who appears to have everything going for him. But his downfall begins when he receives a scholarship to a major university. There, he finds his dream blocked from all directions by a ruthless coach, an unethical university president, and a cynical professor as he attempts to play the game he loves, satisfy his desire for knowledge, and guard his integrity.

Said to rival John Grisham’s A Time to Kill among debut novels, The Forever Season was first published by St. Martin’s Press in 1995. Bookpage proclaimed, “It is so much more than a sports story. . . . As understated and as clearly written as the better work of Erskine Caldwell. And as shocking!” The Chattanooga Free Press described it as “a fast-paced, funny and poignant look at coming of age [with] vivid characters [and] well-drawn witty prose [that] will engage readers who don’t know a clip from a couplet.”

In The Forever Season, Don Keith writes with a concise, hard-edged pen about a subject he knows well—the South, its trailer park culture, and its passion for gridiron glory—while exploring universal themes of fumbling youth and innocence lost.