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About Champion Of The World
Product Description A Boston Globe Best Book of the YearIn this stunning historical fiction debut set in the world of wrestling in the 1920s, a husband and wife are set adrift in a place where everyone has something to hide and not even the fights can be taken at face value. Late summer, 1921: Disgraced former lightweight champion Pepper Van Dean has spent the past two years on the carnival circuit performing the dangerous “hangman’s drop” and taking on all comers in nightly challenge bouts. But when he and his cardsharp wife, Moira, are marooned in the wilds of Oregon, Pepper accepts an offer to return to the world of wrestling as a trainer for Garfield Taft, a down-and-out African American heavyweight contender in search of a comeback and a shot at the world title. At the training camp in rural Montana, Pepper and Moira soon realize that nothing is what it seems: not Taft, the upcoming match, or the training facility itself. With nowhere to go and no options left, Pepper and Moira must carefully navigate the world of gangsters, bootlegging, and fixed competitions, in the hope that they can carve out a viable future. A story of second chances and a sport at the cusp of major change, Champion of the World is a wonderful historical debut from a new talent in fiction. Review Praise for Champion of the World “A riveting novel about hardheaded men, tough women, and even tougher times in Prohibition America. It’s difficult to believe Chad Dundas’s CHAMPION OF THE WORLD is a debut novel—so fluid is it’s plot movement, so sure the narrative...slyly ambitious…one of the most wonderfully controlled displays of storytelling by a new author in recent memory. Besides the page-turning momentum and thrilling set pieces, Dundas’s novel has an almost sweet melancholy. So many of the characters are searching for redemption… When the betrayals, failures, and mishaps come, they’re surprising and at times brutal, as merciless in their own way as that greatest of culprits here, the slow slipping away of time.”— O Magazine“A well written, engaging tale that reads like a beautiful grappling match between experienced and will trained athletes. Dundas has worked a tale that is intricate and intense with the call and response feeling of watching an excellent athletic contest. With twists and turns that are unexpected yet flow naturally, Champion keeps the reader entranced and curious throughout.”— Missoulian “With crisp, muscular prose, this 470-page historical novel illuminates a time of rapid change in America.”— Poets & Writers “ Champion of the World, a terrific debut novel from Chad Dundas, is about professional wrestling in the early 1920s, when the sport wasn’t unabashedly fake the way it is today. But you don’t have to be a wrestle-maniac to enjoy it. If you appreciate great storytelling and dynamic characters, this book is going to satisfy… [Dundas] writes exciting action sequences. But his real gift is in making 1920s America and the people who populate it come vibrantly alive. In his hands, Champion of the World is an extraordinary trip through time to a culture very different from our own — never does it feel like a dry history textbook.”— Fort Worth Star-Telegram “At first glance, Champion of the World is a novel about wrestling in the 1920s. But what's that saying about the tip of the iceberg?”— Portland Oregonian “Dundas puts the gritty, unpleasant realities of the opening decades of the twentieth century on display, offering something of an implicit critique of the prevailing attitudes of Americans, both then and now. Wrestling fans with a penchant for history will relish the details woven into Champion of the World….Through his compelling and artful construction of Champion of the World, Dundas effectively provides wrestling fans with our own equivalent of folk heroes like Paul Bunyan and John Henry….For its unique content, vivid storytelling, and noteworthy attention to detail, we award Champion of the World five out of five suplexes.
