Sooley

Notes From Your Bookseller

Sooley is a moving and affecting story of a young man’s drive to make it in America so he can save his family from unimaginable terrors in South Sudan. At just 17, Samuel „Sooley“ Sooleymon joins his team in a basketball tournament in the United States. In a heartbreaking turn of events, he learns he cannot return home when civil war breaks out, tearing his family apart. Grisham proves once again his storytelling abilities thrive on the court — whether it’s a legal thriller or a story of ambition and hoop dreams.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER ? John Grisham takes you to a different kind of court in his first basketball novel. Samuel „Sooley“ Sooleymon is a raw, young talent with big hoop dreams–and even bigger challenges off the court.

„Hard to put down … the pages turn quickly … building to a climax that won’t leave readers doubting whether this is a John Grisham novel.“ –Associated Press

In the summer of his seventeenth year, Sam­uel Sooleymon gets the chance of a lifetime: a trip to the United States with his South Sudanese teammates to play in a showcase basket­ball tournament. He has never been away from home, nor has he ever been on an airplane. The opportunity to be scouted by dozens of college coaches is a dream come true.

Samuel is an amazing athlete, with speed, quick­ness, and an astonishing vertical leap. The rest of his game, though, needs work, and the American coaches are less than impressed.

During the tournament, Samuel receives dev­astating news from home: A civil war is raging across South Sudan, and rebel troops have ran­sacked his village. His father is dead, his sister is missing, and his mother and two younger brothers are in a refugee camp.

Samuel desperately wants to go home, but it’s just not possible. Partly out of sympathy, the coach of North Carolina Central offers him a scholar­ship. Samuel moves to Durham, enrolls in classes, joins the team, and prepares to sit out his freshman season. There is plenty of more mature talent and he isn’t immediately needed.

But Samuel has something no other player has: a fierce determination to succeed so he can bring his family to America. He works tirelessly on his game, shooting baskets every morning at dawn by himself in the gym, and soon he’s dominating everyone in practice. With the Central team los­ing and suffering injury after injury, Sooley, as he is nicknamed, is called off the bench. And the legend begins.

But how far can Sooley take his team? And will success allow him to save his family?

Gripping and moving, Sooley showcases John Grisham’s unparalleled storytelling powers in a whole new light. This is Grisham at the top of his game.

Editorial Reviews

03/01/2021

Grisham (A Time for Mercy) shoots an airball in this sappy novel about a South Sudanese teen’s journey from his impoverished home to the world of American sports. Samuel Sooleymon, 17, described as the best basketball player in his village of Lotta, is invited to try out for South Sudan’s national basketball team amid the civil war’s relative peace. Despite undeveloped passing and shooting skills, Sooleymon’s natural athleticism appeals to the national team’s coach, Ecko Lam. With Sooleymon away in the U.S. for an exhibition game, a rebel rampage through Lotta is described in grisly detail, with the fate of his family uncertain. When Sooleymon learns of the attack, he’s determined to return home, but Lam convinces him there’s nothing he can do. Eventually, he accepts a full scholarship at North Carolina Central, where he’s nicknamed Sooley, dedicates himself to practicing, and determines to gain attention from the NBA so he can earn the money needed to bring his family to the U.S. As Sooley’s star begins to rise, though, Grisham tosses in a jarring tragic episode, and clunky foreshadowing and thin characters, such as Sooley’s love interest, don’t help. This is a disappointing outing from a writer capable of much better. Agent: David Gernert, the Gernert Co. (Apr.)
– Publishers Weekly

2021-03-03
Legal eagle and mystery maven Grisham shifts gears with a novel about roundball.

What possessed Grisham to stop writing about murder in the Spanish moss-dripping milieus of the Deep South is anyone’s guess, and why he elected to write about basketball, one might imagine, speaks to some deep passion for the game. The depth of that love doesn’t quite emerge in these pages, flat of affect, told almost as if a by-the-numbers biography of an actual player. As it is, Grisham invents an all-too-believable hero in Samuel Sooleymon, who plays his way out of South Sudan, a nation wrought by sectarian violence–Sooley is a Dinka, Grisham instructs, of „the largest ethnic class in the country,“ pitted against other ethnic groups–and mired in poverty despite the relative opulence of the capital city of Juba, with its „tall buildings, vibrancy, and well-dressed people.“ A hard-charging but heart-of-gold coach changes his life when he arrives at the university there, having been dismissed earlier as a „nonshooting guard.“ Soon enough Sooley is sinking three-pointers with alarming precision, which lands him a spot on an American college team. Much of the later portion of Grisham’s novel bounces between Sooley’s on-court exploits, jaw-dropping as they are, and his efforts to bring his embattled family, now refugees from civil war, to join him in the U.S.; explains Grisham, again, „Beatrice and her children were Dinka, the largest tribe in South Sudan, and their strongman was supposedly in control of most of the country,“ though evidently not the part where they lived. Alas, Sooley, beloved of all, bound for a glorious career in the NBA, falls into the bad company that sudden wealth and fame can bring, and it all comes crashing down in a morality play that has only the virtue of bringing this tired narrative to an end.

Unlike baseball, basketball has contributed little to world literature. Call this Exhibit A.
– Kirkus Reviews

Hard to put down … the pages turn quickly … building to a climax that won’t leave readers doubting whether this is a John Grisham novel.“
–Associated Press

„An intensely moving story, told with the same eye for character and descriptive detail Grisham brings to his crime novels. His occasional forays into general fiction are usually interesting, but this one is considerably more than that. It’s skillfully written, with a deeply compelling central character and a story that is full of raw emotion and suspense.“
–Booklist
– From the Publisher