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Summary: A different slice of life
Review: Reminiscent of "Season on the Brink", this book presents a world that I'm not familiar with but, in a way, am completely familiar with. The most interesting thing is how bias and prejudice and the debilitating aspects of "the dole" are universal. In my world, it's black and white. Here, it's red and white.Hats off to a guy who has the courage to leave out the political correctness and just "tell it like it is". There are no simple good guys and bad guys here. There's just folks living there lives dealing with some really big problems. One nagging question since I read this a few months back: Why did the author sit on this book for several years without finishing/publishing?
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Summary: The price Sharon Payed
Review: I am from Crow Agency and attended school in Hardin with Sharon. She is older than i but none the less I am familiar with everything in the book. I want every one to know that while this book is writtin well and has a correct portrayal of life as a Native american athlete. There was a price to pay for all the (good reading). Once the book was published and put on the shelves & everyone Sharon was related to or knew was able to read it. She paid the price for sharing her story. Those she had mentioned in the story were furious with her and made her pay dearly. It was and still is a scandel in it self. I will leave it at that but I wonder now was it worth it for Sharon? Her life will not be the same again beacause this man (Larry Colten) rocked Crow Agency and no one will soon forget.
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Summary: Real Life Between Whites and Indians
Review: I couldn't believe how well Larry Colton was able to fully explains how it is between Whites and Indians. This story is being played out in every indian community, the only thing that changes is the faces and names. Once I started the book I couldn't put it down until I had know what happened to everyone in the book. I felt like I knew everyone, because of how well the people were described. I can't wait to lend my book to my family and especially my Uncle who is a coach on the Navajo Rez. This is not only a GREAT book, but it would be a GREAT MOVIE! Someone somewhere needs to make this a MOVIE!
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Summary: Hardin, Hard As They Come
Review: As a child in the 50s & 60s, I spent my summers visiting family in Hardin. My Aunt was a bartender at the Mint, and my cousins were half CROW. Mom and Dad had many arguments during these summer vacations from Colorado to Daddy's family's home in Hardin. It was all about drinking. Years before Mom had "gotten him away from there" as she would say, so he wouldn't loose everything and amount to nothing. My family were German, Scot settlers who had homesteaded in the Madison in the early part of the century.Anyway, my Aunt Myrna was a woman who didn't drink, but bartended in this tough town for nearly 50 years.She was respected and beloved by all her customers, many who were Crow. Part of life in Hardin was mutual respect for the other cultures, you felt not a majority but part of a town where cultures mixed well, each making fun of the other or protecting each other like it was a good way to be living. Sure, the underbelly was alcoholism. But everynow and then a cowboy like my Dad could would move away and find a different lifestyle, an Indian would go to college and come back and teach school and set an example. Am I talking about the 50's and 60's when there was still hope? When kid's attitudes weren't quite as ugly? Well, probably. It's a damn good book. It's interesting to read names and places that I know so well. It made me sad and lonely and I loved it. Thank you to the author for the humor and the real deal.What a good read.
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Summary: Basketball and life on the Little Big Horn
Review: Larry Colton travels into Montana's Crow country in pursuit of a story of how young men on the reservation (the rez) are using basketball as a way to regain hope and honor. A chance sighting of a graceful and instinctive female player in a pickup game changes all that. After seeing Sharon LaForge, Colton switches the focus of his quest and becomes a shadow of the Hardin High Lady Bulldogs, in their quest to make it to the Montana high school championships. He is allowed unlmited access to the team, their practices, invited into some of their homes, tutored by some of the locals in the ways of the rez, and the delicate relationships between whites and Indians. This is a glimpse into a world I have not known much about. With unemployment, alcoholism, physical abuse as the norm, it is easy to see how a community can pin its hopes for redemption and validation on the slim shouldres of high school girls....and Sharon's family is expecting victory to redeem them from tragedy and scandal. Counting Coup is at its heart a great sports story, it reminded me of the documentary Hoop Dreams. It gives an honest and compassionate look at high school athletics, those who play, those who coach, those who watch and all those who pin their dreams on victory. It also is the story of a young girl trying to find her place in her world, and the dreams claimed and lost along the way.
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Summary: Reality on the Rez
Review: No political correctness here, no trumpeting idealism, no hard-breathing expose of the flaws of the reservation Indians or the whites who live around and among them. Larry Colton gives us only reality, a reality that condemns racism on both sides but shows the hurdles that the residents of Hardin put in front of themselves. His real-life characters don't do what any of his readers might expect them to do or want them to do; they do what they do. In Sharon and her girls basketball team's quest for the Montana state title, Larry Colton finds and reports all the elements of high drama: tragedy, betrayal, passion, defeat and hope. And, he finds them in a world and a people unknown to almost all of us. You'll hang onto your seat waiting for the outcome of the basketball games, but far more you'll hang on waiting to see how the members of his cast succeed or fail in their lives.
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Summary: Basketball and life on the rez!
Review: I live in Hardin, Montana. And this book is the talk of the town. Everyone asks "Have you read The Book"? And those of us who have it, won't loan it out! Larry spent more than a year with us, was a member of the community, participated in school activities, and talked to many people who live and work here, both Indian and White. What he has written is true. Life is like what he tells about. Sharon and Randy are still here, as are most of the people whom we all got to know through his words. What stikes many of us here is how he has captured the essense of what it is like for a young Indian growing up on the rez, and why most do not leave here. As to why, Larry has voiced what many of us who live here have never said. We just try to live together peacefully, encourage when we can, and try to get along.
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Summary: An extraordinary book
Review: Larry Colton tries hard to remain objective and detached in writing his account of life on the rez, and of Sharon LaForge's attempts to transcend it by excelling at basketball. He fails miserably in his attempt--getting caught up in Sharon's struggle, telling us about his own life, injecting his opinions about how the coach should be coaching--and the book is infinitely better for it. An objective, detached account would not have been nearly as effective and affecting. We really come to care about Sharon, as Colton did, and root for her, and are crushed when things don't work out in the heartwarming way we've come to expect from innumerable sports movies. You don't have to love basketball, or even like it particularly, to love this book. It's as well written and dramatic as the best of novels, but it's far more memorable than most novels because it's true.
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Summary: A Lesson in Hope
Review: In the tradition of Madeleine Blais (IN THESE GIRLS, HOPE IS A MUSCLE) and H.G. Bissinger (FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS), Larry Colton spends a season living in Hardin, Montana, studying the lives of the girls' basketball team and the members of the Crow Indian tribe who are members. In particular, he focuses on the team's leading player, senior Sharon Laforge, whose talent seems to insure that she will escape the generational poverty and cycle of alcoholism that plague her family and other members of the tribe. As we learn, however, talent guarantees nothing. As the Hardin High Lady Bulldogs head for the state playoffs, Colton spends more and more time with the members of the team, and with Sharon Laforge and her family in particular. He watches with increasing concern as she battles with an alcoholic mother, a permissive aunt and grandmother, and as she becomes more and more involved with an emotionally distant, physically abusive boyfriend. Colton's account of his season with the team and their families creates an indelible image of life on the reservation with its infighting and politics, tragedies and traditions. I found myself rooting for Sharon Laforge and hoping desperately that she would use her talents to escape what seemed like an inevitably bleak future. The cycle of poverty, abuse, and family control are powerful opponents however, and there is little hope that Laforge will lead a life much different than her elders. The story of the team's season, with its suspensfully written scenes of the basketball action, will keep readers hooked to the page, as will the ongoing dramas on the reservation and the tension between whites and tribal members. I understood much more thoroughly the cycle of abuse, poverty, and alcoholism after reading this book. I learned a great deal about dreams and about hope, too.
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Summary: poignant true story
Review: This reviewer normally would not read a non-fiction work about sports, but my spouse used to coach girl's basketball and persuaded me to do so. It turned into quite a surprise as this work drives the lane with its in depth look at the divisions in society. Author Larry Colton went to Little Big Horn to follow a local high school boys team, but quickly honed in on a female superstar, Sharon Laforge. The Crow see Sharon as a symbol that will break the cycle of their children living miserable lives. That pressure of tribal hope almost obscures Sharon's simple dream of wanting to be the first member of her tribe to attain an athletic scholarship. The season is a strong run towards the state title, but the book showcases the racial chasm between the Native Americans and whites even as the team tries to become one to achieve the goal of winning. COUNTING COUP: A TRUE STORY OF BASKETBALL AND HONOR ON THE LITTLE BIG HORN is slam dunk look at high school women's sports on a reservation that is more than just a minor chronicle or journal. Though a sports book, this account is actually an insightful look at a segment of life that serves as a microcosm of our larger society. Harriet Klausner
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