Home And Away

Mum is a rehab counselor for people with alcohol problems. Grandma Raynor lives next door. Dad is a driver for Elgas. Then there s me, fifteen, into a lot of different stuff. Music, surfing, animals, tennis, swimming, computer games. And my sister, Claire, and brother Toby. We re a typical Australian family. Barbeques, footy, gardening, school, Holden Commodores Then one day things change. April 26, Dad burns the toast, yells at Toby, thanks me for cleaning the cab of the truck, kisses Mum and Toby, then he s gone April 27, the war starts May 21, the city s in ruins, blackouts nearly all the time, food is hard to find September 13, Dad s hears news of a boat. We might get out of here yet September 28, it's just after dawn. A boat from their Navy has found us. We wave and cry and cheer. But then, slowly, we realise they are shouting at us, telling us to go away September 30, we are in a huge prison, with razor wire all around us. The government says there s no room for us. The Prime Minister says that if they let us out into the community it ll just encourage other illegal immigrants. The Deputy Prime Minister says we re not genuine refugees. The Minister for Immigration says we should have gone through the proper procedures and applied to come here the prescribed way. Apparently there was a queue or a waiting list or something, and we were meant to find an Immigration Office and put our names down to be considered. I guess they re right. I feel terrible about the trouble we ve caused them.

David French, potential independent candidate for the 2016 presidential election, and his wife Nancy deliver a powerful story of what happens when a person--or rather, a family--answers the call to serve their nation. David French picked up the newspaper in the comfort of his penthouse in Philadelphia, and read about a soldier - father of two - who was wounded in Iraq. Immediately, he was stricken with a question: Why him and not me? David was a 37-year-old father of two, a Harvard Law graduate and president of a free speech organization. In other words, he was used to pushing pencils, not toting M16s. His wife Nancy was raising two children and writing from home. She was worrying about field trips and playdates, not about her husband going to war. HOME AND AWAY chronicles not just a soldier at war, but a family at war - a husband in Iraq, a wife and children at home, greeting each day with hope and fear, facing the challenge with determination, tears, and more than a little joy.

Over the course of his long career of covering major league baseball, numerous players, managers, umpires, and games, as well as unexpected and humorous events on and off the field, have made lasting impressions on John Kuenster. This is a selection of essays Kuenster wrote for "Warm Up Tosses," the Baseball Digest column he has written every month since he became editor of the Digest in 1969. He shares his opinions and insights on managers in columns like "Casey Stengel Was One of a Kind" and "George Anderson Still 'Sparky' When Talking Baseball"; history in "President Kennedy, No Stranger to Baseball" and "Baseball's Brightest and Darkest Moments of 1900s"; pitchers in "Here's a Vote for Whitey Ford" and "Complete-Game Pitchers, A Disappearing Breed in the Majors"; umpires in "Umps, Love 'em or Not, They're Vital to the Game"; infielders in "Derek Jeter, Cornerstone of Recent Yankee Championships" and "Third Basemen, Crucial to Winning but Often Overlooked"; outfielders in "Please, No 'Soft Pitches' for Hank Aaron" and "Barry Bonds Had a Season for the Ages"; and catchers in "Many Catchers Struggling through Learning Process". Also included are some of Kuenster's columns about scouts and coaches, team executives, hitting, baseball in general, teams, ball parks, the World Series, humor, and Hall of Famers.

“Montgomery’s thoughtful craft is driven by immediacy and tension and grounded in emotional authenticity. ... A love letter to the intricacies of family and multitudinous black girlhood.” — Kirkus Reviews, starred "Home and Away shines a multicolored light on the myriad meanings of 'family' and how each plays a role in shaping who we are, what we do, and who we become. I didn't want it to end!" — Nic Stone, New York Times bestselling author of Dear Martin Tasia Quirk is young, Black, and fabulous. She's a senior, she's got great friends, and a supportive and wealthy family. She even plays football as the only girl on her private high school's team. But when she catches her mamma trying to stuff a mysterious box in the closet, her identity is suddenly called into question. Now Tasia’s determined to unravel the lies that have overtaken her life. Along the way, she discovers what family and forgiveness really mean, and that her answers don’t come without a fee. An artsy bisexual boy from the Valley could help her find them—but only if she stops fighting who she is, beyond the color of her skin.

"A gloriously entertaining plunge into the ultra-competitive world of youth sports and the lengths we go to for the kids and game we love."--New York Times bestselling author KJ Dell'Antonia Two friends, one Olympic dream, and the choice that stood in the way. Once Leigh and Susy were close friends and teammates bound for Olympic hockey gold, but when Leigh’s sure-fire plan to make the final roster backfired, she left everything behind to start over, including the one person who knew her secret. Two decades later, Leigh’s a successful investment banker, happily married, and the mom of a hockey prodigy, so when a career opportunity lands the family back in Minnesota, Leigh takes the shot for her kid. Back in the ultra-competitive world she left behind, the move puts her in Susy’s orbit, a daily reminder of how Leigh watched from the sidelines as her former teammate went on to Olympic glory. Despite the coldness between them, Susy can’t help but hope that Leigh might lace up her skates and join her in the coaches’ box—after all Leigh knows better than anyone how hard it is to be a woman in this world. Susy knows soon her daughter, Georgie, will be seen as a “girl athlete,” relegated to the B team, with less support and opportunity to advance. But Leigh believes keeping Susy at arms’ length is the only way to hide her history with her former coach Jeff Carlson. When he hints of new favors in exchange for her son’s ice time, Leigh is caught in the ultimate bind: come clean about what happened when she was an Olympic hopeful and risk her marriage or play Jeff’s game. In a moment of desperation, Leigh realizes the one person she thought was her biggest competitor—her former teammate—might turn out to be her biggest ally. Told with Kathleen West’s trademark wit and compassion, Home or Away is a story about overcoming our pasts, confronting our futures, and the sustaining bonds of female friendship.

A gripping insight into the power of sport to change lives. Every four years the soccer World Cup unites people all over the globe to watch their favourite team battle it out to make the final. But there's another World Cup that isn't quite as glamorous: the Homeless World Cup (HWC). In 2008 award-winning author and filmmaker Dave Bidini accompanied the poor and dispossessed players of Homeless Team Canada to the HWC in Melbourne. What Bidini found was the ultimate underdog sporting event, teeming with stories of humanity and more relevant to our times than any modern big-ticket spectacle. Through seeing the players' disappointments, frustrations, joys and triumphs, Bidini understands the true meaning of this tournament. He sees firsthand the power of sport to transform the lives of those on the edge ?how the decision to play this game can mean the difference between survival or a life of addiction, poverty or crime. Home and Away offers a powerful look at the homeless and disadvantaged, from the barrios of Mexico City and the shanties of West Africa to the streets of North America, Europe and Australia. Whether you're a sports fanatic or a keen observer of human nature, you'll never watch a soccer game in the same way again.

Two world-class writers reveal themselves to be the ultimate soccer fans in these collected letters Karl Ove Knausgaard is sitting at home in Skåne with his wife, four small children, and dog. He is watching soccer on TV and falls asleep in front of the set. He likes 0-0 draws, cigarettes, coffee, and Argentina. Fredrik Ekelund is away, in Brazil, where he plays soccer on the beach and watches matches with others. Ekelund loves games that end up 4-3 and teams that play beautiful soccer. He likes caipirinhas and Brazil. Home and Away is an unusual soccer book, in which the two authors use soccer and the World Cup in Brazil as the arena for reflections on life and death, art and politics, class and literature. What does it mean to be at home in a globalized world? This exchange of letters opens up new vistas and gives us stories from the lives of two creative writers. We get under their skin and gain insight into their relationships with modern times and soccer’s place in their lives, the significance the game has for people in general, and the question Was this the best soccer championship ever?

In 2008, Dave Bidini accompanies Homeless Team Canada to the Homeless World Cup—an annual street soccer tournament with goals unlike any other: the most important of which is to create life-changing opportunities for the millions of homeless people worldwide. In Melbourne, Australia, Bidini watches team members play and shares the disappointments, frustrations, joys, and triumphs of forty-five-year-old Billy, who is a former addict; the quick-footed twenty-four-year-old Moroccan immigrant Juventus, who refuses to talk about his past; and most of all, the endearing teenaged Krystal, who carries a photograph of her long-dead mother and dreams of a better life. Bidini begins to understand what this tournament means to all those involved. He sees firsthand the power of sport to transform the lives of those on the edge—how the decision to play this game can mean the difference between survival and heading down a road of addiction, poverty, or crime. Home and Away offers a powerful look at the poor and dispossessed, from the barrios of Mexico City and the shanties of West Africa to the streets of North America and Europe, illuminating the renewed meaning that these players find in such an inspiring game.