Gary Bye ’71 Ag., ’74 Voc. Tech. Ed.
Granite Point Publishing: 2022
Big-city football coach Brock Gallagher trades Seattle for his hometown, the fictional Glory Grove in eastern Washington, to care for his ailing mother. He plans to stay on the farm only until she passes. But the coach at the high school Brock once attended—and where he once was a star athlete—is forced out. And Brock finds himself focusing on reviving the football team. Standing in his way are the principal who thinks sports are a waste of time and a former teammate who’s now married to Brock’s high school sweetheart and holds deep-seated resentment for his onetime rival.
Brock aims to ease back into rural life without getting too caught up in small-town gossip and drama. Professionally, he works to get the Grizzlies in shape while suffering one setback after another. Personally, he feels his wife, who prefers the urban art world to simple country living, is drifting away.
Writer and wheat farmer Gary Bye of Pomeroy juxtaposes metropolitan and rural life and values against a backdrop of raising wheat and pigs, going to the fair, taking occasional trips to the city, and, of course, watching and rooting for the hometown football team. Will his protagonist recommit to his marriage and return to Seattle or remain in the Grove for good, coaching his beloved sport in his hometown? Readers will have a gut feeling before the book is half over.
Bye draws inspiration from his own life in this small-town football novel. He was a three-year varsity starter for the Pomeroy High School Pirates before graduating in 1967 and working as a high school teacher and coach. He also served as a magazine editor and photographer for farm publications and spent several years as a journalist in Washington, DC. He’s written a two-volume history of the Pomeroy Pirates football team: From the First Whistle and To the Final Gun.
His award-winning first novel will resonate with readers who love football, especially high school football, are perhaps nostalgic for their own pigskin days, and maybe also left their hearts in America’s farmland, where entire towns turn out to watch the home team play under the Friday night lights.
Glory Grove won silver for Best First Book in the fiction category from the Independent Book Publishers Association in 2023. In 2024, the title won an American Fiction Award in the sports category.
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The glory of small-town life: Q&A with author Gary Bye