Sweet Turnaround J
By Bill Whaley, Taos Daily News

You'll love Janey Holmes and her teammates in local author Peggy Beck's basketball book. Beck's fictional account of the polyglot Riverside Ravens, a hard-driving girls basketball team, is a fast and moving read. Janey guides the reader through a season of high drama, hopes dashed and revived.

In Peggy Beck's novel, Sweet Turnaround J, the basketball team's composed of brown, black, white girls and their coach's struggle against a number of obstacles: adolescent infatuation, winter, getting passing grades, poverty, and patriarchal prejudice. The author told Horse Fly that she couldn't find a basketball novel about girls, so she wrote one. Beck's narrator Janey Holmes and her teammates, the tall and sexy dreamboat Latoya Watkins or short and fiery Mickey Johnson, or the dead-eye Navajo Nia Beaulieu and the speedy but well-mannered New Mexican Alejo Lopez all help the author jump-start a new genre.

As for the audience, this reviewer isn't a teenage girl but found the novel a fast action-packed read. It is filled with insights, especially about how to train and play basketball. Coach Berro is a model of discipline and knowledge when it comes to turning a bunch of idiosyncratic teen-athletes into a team. Beck's style--lots of dialogue, action, and a command of high school slang--adds to the realism.

The author also recreates the experience of growing up through high school and focuses on the importance of relationships among the girls, parents, and friends. The depiction of relationships is often missing in the male sports books, which focus more on narrative action. Beck's portrayal of a multicultural team with all the signifiers suggests an observant eye and much research. Even as we hold our breath on behalf of the Riverside Ravens, due to their growing pains, we discover the important lessons and human strength that basketball or any sport can teach in the drive toward winning games and learning life's lessons.

Like Janey Holmes says, "Nobody has given us any respect the whole season but we know we're stellar." And Peggy Beck has given girls and readers a stellar novel. Sweet Turnaround J is a good candidate for a high school English course or gift to inspire a young athlete. Bravo, Peggy! Good job.

Book Review: Sweet Turnaround J
By Keri Mikulski, Pretty Tough

Looking for an enjoyable basketball book to read this winter season? Check out P.V. Beck’s Sweet Turnaround J published by Bedazzled Ink.

Told over the course of a basketball season, Sweet Turnaround J follows sixteen- year-old spunky All State basketball player Janey Holmes through the most tumultuous season of her life. After her school suddenly closes, Janey must join a new team at a new school that hasn’t won a basketball game in over three years, leaving Janey to wonder, is her basketball career over?

As the Riverside Ravens transform from the worst to the best team in the league, Janey’s tumultuous temper, toughness, and first love are tested and begin to threaten the basketball team. Will the Ravens win the championship for the first time in school history? But, before this can happen, Janey has to overcome all the obstacles tossed her way. A fun book for the basketball player and fan.

A Comment posted in response to "How I Picked 10 Best Feminist Teen Books of All Time" by Jessica Stites on the Ms. Blog

"I recently finished reading "Sweet Turnaround J", by P.V. Beck, and found myself immediately pulled into the story of a young teen struggling with issues of identity, family and sports. And, it is told from the perspective of Janey, the protagonist. Definitely a Young Adult novel, and one which I highly recommend, and which should be included in any current list of "must read" young adult fiction - especially in this day and age of high teen suicides and the need to find ones place in the world as a young woman."--comment posted by P. Nelson.

She shoots! She scores!
By Andi Marquette "Tierra de - (Colorado)

For any woman who has ever played high school basketball, ever had her first heart-aching crush during those years, and ever struggled with family issues, the issues of her teammates, school problems, and team-gelling problems, this book is for you. And if you're a teen who plays high school sports and has to deal with everything that comes with that, including personal problems, internal and external dramas, then this book is for you, as well.

Full disclosure: I played high school basketball back in the day. I'm also a basketball fan, so when I read books that deal with basketball, I can tell if an author knows her stuff or not and PV Beck Knows. Her. Stuff.

Full disclosure two: I played high school basketball back in the day. I'm also a basketball fan, so when I read books that deal with basketball, I can tell if an author knows her stuff or not and PV Beck Knows. Her. Stuff.

Now, for the mechanics: Beck writes a tight, well-paced narrative with snappy, true-to-life dialogue, fully realized characters, and the angst that comes with the pressures of being an underdog team in an overdog world.

This is a book about basketball the game, yes, but it's also about basketball the culture, and how it can both pull people together and drive wedges between them. It's about how high school girls on the cusp of womanhood deal with responsibility, competition, heartache, growing up, personal problems, school struggles, and finding common ground with people they might never have thought they could.

For those of us who survived high school and a high school sport, this book brought all of that right back. I recognized myself in these characters, in the flaws, the friendships, the alienation, the secrets of the home life that you never showed at school but your best friend knew about, and the sense of being at odds with most adults and many of your fellow students. Beck captures that, and she also captures that sense of coming together, of finding the friends who do have your back, and finding the adults who do, as well.

Women's Basketball Fans
Will Love This Book!!
By Marge - (California)
I love women's basketball and love books about women's basketball. Sweet Turnaround J is in the spirit of In These Girls-Hope is a Muscle, The Same River Twice, and Counting Coup.

But it's more than just a book following All-State Janey Holmes' sophomore year at a new high school on a basketball team that hasn't won a game in three years. Beck paints a world that mixes a girl's obsession with basketball during those difficult middle teenage years with a fascinating and almost mystical weave of Latino, African American, and Native American cultures brought together in a group of girls who, just maybe, can learn to work together as a team--a winning team.

The author P.V. Beck is a former basketball coach, and her descriptions of the practices and the games carry a vividness and excitement that kept me glued to the pages. The interplay between the girls on the team is spot on--sometimes goofy, sometimes confrontational, sometimes poignant, but always entertaining. You really grow to love these girls and root for them as the season progresses.

Beck calls upon her academic interest in myth to give Sweet Turnaround J a subtle but deeper literary level. This creates a strong foundation for the recurring themes of Native American myth and a few literary tropes that form an overarching structure to the book. The writing style is fluid and her descriptions and language have a beauty that transcends yet enhances basketball as a real game and as a metaphor for the various life's issues and growing up the team goes through in a season.

The last game in the book is one of the best I've ever read. It's epic in a really, really good way. It made me giddy with delight, like I feel when I'm at a live game -- filled with gripping excitement and drama. Its twists and turns are realistic -- I've seen games as crazy as this one, where it comes down to little more than who wants the victory more.

Sweet Turnaround J is a must for women's basketball fans. I wish there were more books like it.

Sweet Turnaround J
By Salem West, The Rainbow Reader

In 1996, Madeleine Blais wrote the nonfiction basketball classic, In These Girls Hope is a Muscle. Her story followed a Massachusetts high school basketball team with great promise, but a history of not going all the way. At the time, there were two schools of thought regarding her book: On one side she was pinged mightily for exaggerating gender issues and gushing sentimentality; but on the other side she was lauded as the author who almost single handedly reduced the phrase “female athlete” to the more apropos “athlete”.

About damn time the world figured THAT out!

Ms. Beck’s 2009 basketball classic, Sweet Turnaround J, reminded me in sooo many ways of the Blais book. That’s not a knock against the author, the subject, or the story; it’s just something that occurred to me. As many similarities as there were, I can also point out contrasts.

Why don’t you put your money where your mouth is, then? Fantastic idea, I think I will.

In the Blias book, we are introduced to a team that, for the most part, is a single, solitary unit that has the one goal of winning. They are typical, but exceptional high school girls. They have trials and triumphs. They laugh, cry, struggle with their school work, love lives, and families. They get sick, hurt, and mad. And, they find ways to work through problems and stay focused on their goal: The State Championship.

As with most any high school team, every year a few players leave and a few new ones join. In Sweet Turnaround J, though, we see our narrator, Janey Holmes, returning from playing club ball in California and finding out that her small school, with what was a successful team, closed. In its place, she finds not just a new high school, but one that inexplicably combines her old school with a bigger school that didn’t have much of a ball team.

Instead of her respectful, winning coach, Janie and her old teammates are introduced to the angry, ill-prepared, and resentful “Kelly the Belly”.

For the record, this part of the book hit home like a tidal wave. My “Kelly the Belly” was a despicable, psychotic, mind-f^*k of a woman not so lovingly nicknamed, “The Trog”. Yes, as in troglodyte. At 13, she was my first introduction to a living, breathing dyke, and it almost ruined it for me . . . almost. Thank God for teenage hormones, and high school basketball crushes!!!!

Thankfully, Kelly the Belly and the creepy JV coach are dismissed after several girls, including Janey, are kicked off the team and the parents finally get involved. Then, in walks Coach Berro, a former player who has a vested interest in the success of the team. She whips the girls into shape, and slowly teaches discipline, basketball, trust, and respect.

Game-by-game, the girls improve, both as individual players and as a team. They overcome injury, academic problems, poor decision-making, and teenage love. While we don’t see if the girls make it all the way to the State Championship, or whether any of them get named to the All-State Team, we do see them work to overcome the odds and the naysayers.

So, um, did you like the book or what?

Well, frankly, I loved the book. I’ve read it twice, and can’t really find much that wasn’t well conceived, well constructed, or well considered. Ms. Beck is patient with the story and her characters. We get to know Janey and most of her family, as well as an entire basketball team, a few parents, and the Coach. This is a huge list of characters, but by the end, we know each of them well.

Which is worthy of much gratitude and genuflecting, in my humble opinion.

Ms. Beck was able to portray the hopes, fears, confusions, and thought processes of teenage girls with amazing precision. She was also able to show us adults with strengths, flaws, and insecurities. She took special care in presenting the appropriate music, vocabulary, and intricate relationships of the young women. And, introduced gay and straight; outgoing and introverted; religious and secular; black, white, Native American, Latina, and mixed characters. Some of the girls came from broken homes and others from solid homes. One girl lost her parents. Another has an abusive father. Janey has a mother that is a functional alcoholic.

I always feel a little weird when I read a book that features lesbian teenagers. Don’t get me wrong; I think it is a MUST that girls and young women have these resources as they’re learning who they are and that they’re not alone. Still, as an adult, I don’t want too much detail about what goes on between the sheets. Thankfully, Ms. Beck addressed the burgeoning love affair between Janey and Alejo with supreme skill, good taste, and respect. When they ‘kissed and everything’, I knew what likely happened, I was so, so, sooooo happy for them, but I didn’t feel like a 44 year-old letch.

Thank you for that, by the way!

Now, since I’ve yet to come across a perfect book, I can only think of two things in Sweet Turnaround J that needed work:

(1) Did we really need the brother, Noam, who is out on a boat in the Pacific? He didn’t really add anything to the story or the family dynamic; and

(2) Janey called her mom out on her drinking habits, and mom finally figures out that Janie is really good at basketball and becomes more involved with her daughter. However, after Janey calls her mom on the drinking about halfway through the book, it’s never mentioned again. Did mom change? Not a big point, but so much was made early in the book about it, I just kept wondering.

Really, Salem, that’s all you can come up with??? Yup.

So.

Bottom line on Sweet Turnaround J – this was a book that needed to be written. Ms. Beck has produced an amazing concept, well-rounded and complex, yet tight story, and ultimately a great read. Writing about teens, especially if you’re not one, can be a task that goes horribly wrong very quickly. Make no mistake, it didn’t. By the end of the book, I was one of the players, part of their family, and in the stands screaming at the top of my lungs. Everything about this book is good, and if I were a coach, I’d make it required reading, before the first liner was ever run, for my team. Whether they were in high school, college, or the pros.

On the Rainbow Scale, Sweet Turnaround J gets a 5.7 out of 6, because this Sweet Turnaround J hit nothin’ but net.