freshMEN

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Forward

Coach Mickey Clayton can tell a good story. Some stories are from ‘back in the day’ when he was a little boy enjoying the thrill of riding in an open truck bed with his two brothers--even though that thrill probably scared the daylights out of his mother and grandmother. If he relays an incident or occurrence in the world of College Sports, the listener is all ears, taking a moment or two to add a hearty ‘say what’ or a ‘you mean to tell me that…’ to keep the story going. There are times when he’ll share heart-warming stories about his family—how dedicated he and his wife have been to traveling all over the country for their girls and basketball. Or, Coach Clayton will hold your attention with snippets of how wonderful it was to have his dad, the late Coach Mack Clayton, as his assistant coach. 

Whatever the story, Coach Clayton is going to make his listener want to hear every single part of it. And when listening, it’s clear that Coach ‘knows himself some basketball.’ It’s those basketball stories that makes the listener want to do more than listen to these tales. Those stories make a listener want to read about them in a book.

In the novel, FreshMen, Mickey Clayton has answered the requests he’s received from listeners for years, and written a great story for us to read. The first time I encountered this novel, it was in a rough, ‘I think this is novel but let me know if it really is’ format. There was a lot of work that needed to be done on the story to get it ready to be transformed into a book. But those glitches did not take away from how funny, true, and heartwarming this coming of age story about two young black men who played college basketball was.

Marc and Charles are two of the most memorable and perfectly matched characters I’ve encountered in a while. They come to life and make those of us who were in college during the decade of the 1970s stop and remember those years fondly. Marc and Charles re-acquaint us to the men in our generation, reminding us how they matured from boys to men. And younger generations get to experience what it was really like for their dads and their moms, back in the day when they were young enough to get away with wearing those tight jeans with high waists and no belts, platforms, and Super Fly hats and coats, and Foxy Brown hot pants, minis, halters, and hip huggin’ jeans.

FreshMen is a great novel with a wonderful cast of characters—and I do mean characters. I’m glad Coach Clayton listened to all us and wrote this book.

Michele Andrea Bowen

Author of Church Folk and other novels in this series