Dear Paul McDaniel,


My name is Brad P, and I enjoyed reading your story over the summer. I am a student at John Carroll, and I read your book for an assignment. That’s not the only thing I did this summer. I did a lot of basketball camps. Since you play basketball too, I was interested in your book and read the whole thing in one day driving to Hershey Park with my family. I went on a cruise to Alaska with my sister, my aunt, and two of my aunt’s friends. It was really fun. Then I went on a family vacation down in North Carolina.

I thought the novel was very good. I like how you’re protective of Shawn and how you can get focused when you need to be. When you by beat up that bodybuilder in the red Mustang, I thought you should’ve handled that differently. Even though it may be hard with your anger problem. I have an anger problem too. I get mad very easily. The guy almost did hit the girl and the dog but you didn’t need to call him names and beat him up. I like how at the end of the story you were talking to your little brother before you left for the big game. Maybe he understood you, maybe he didn’t, but I thought it was nice how you told him what happened and how you felt and how you felt after. That you loved him and that game was going to be for him.

As the story moved on and unfolded, I do think the author Terry Trueman had a great writing style. He had a way of keeping you reading and reading and not wanting to put the book down. Your character was very realistic to the reader. Not that many readers could connect to the fact that their little brother had cerebral palsy and couldn’t get out of a wheel chair to walk or talk. The family issues or the teenage athletics would be pretty common for most people.

I do have a question for you though. Why did you let the guys put a lighter under your brother’s chin? You knew it was going to happen and you could’ve taken them on. But you didn’t. A part of you wanted Shawn to die because he didn’t have an ideal life. He probably didn’t know that he would never be like anyone else having those seizures all the time, but you shouldn’t want him to die. You love your brother and I love my brothers and sister too, even though we fight a lot we’re a family and nothing can put a closer bond on two people than being a family.

Ways you could possibly raise awareness about the issue in the story is to focus a little more on Shawn and how he has to deal with those problems and how other people have to deal with his problems. I think people will be thinking about this after they read the story because it almost leaves in impression on you. This is a big issue that needs to be addressed and people should start thinking about it and trying to find a way to fix it to the best of their ability.

Thank you for reading me letter and good luck to you in the future at George Town University or Gonzaga . The only advice I can give you is to do good in school work on your anger management problem keep up the good work in basketball and other than that keep doing what you’re doing.



Brad P