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From last night’s email:
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SHAKEN will be available in paperback, featuring this new cover, on March 17th.
i just read your book shaken and i am a huge soccer girl and i love reading this book i love how she had a hard thing in her life and kept going on what she loved and i love how much she tried
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thank you its hard i had a concussion too it was hard so i loved how i could relate to this book
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T____, 6th grade
pls answer back if you can
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I replied . . .
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T,
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I’m very glad to read your kind note. While I hoped to write a book that was more than “just” a soccer story, I did very much want the approval of “huge soccer girls” like you.
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My daughter Maggie played soccer until knee surgeries forced her to quit (three ACL surgeries and done). One unexpected thing she told me was about the first few minutes of practice, how warm and friendly they were, everybody touching base and connecting before the work begins. I tried to capture that small moment in the book. That feeling of being a team.
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Another moment in the story was inspired by an actual USWNT soccer star, Claire Hutton, who attended our local high school in Bethlehem, NY. Everyone who followed local sports knew about Claire from a young age. I only met her once, she may have been 15-16 at the time, when I was out walking my dog Echo on a summer day by the high school. Claire was out on the football field, alone, practicing with an assortment of orange cones. Running sprints, ball drills, and so on. I stopped and we chatted amiably for a few minutes. But that scene — a determined athlete, all alone, driven by some inner flame — was all I needed for Chapter 1 of my book. I wanted my character, Kristy Barrett, to have a little bit of the fire that burned inside Claire.
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How do you not root for a kid — now a young woman — like this?
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I’m sorry but not surprised to hear that you experienced a concussion. Hopefully your recovery went well and you can avoid another incident. The health of your brain is everything. And yet if you are playing the game, and competing, it’s impossible to go halfway. It’s hard to be careful when you are fighting for the ball.
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I wish you luck. My best,
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James Preller
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