The Big Game Is Every Night won Hub City Press’s 2022 South Carolina Novel Series and was published in 2023. The novel follows high schooler Grady Hayes’s tumultuous coming of age in rural South Carolina. After suffering a brutal injury during a football game, Grady works toward a difficult physical Page 223 →recovery only to discover that it’s his relationships and his understanding of himself that’s truly in need of healing.

I was looking forward to seeing Hub City’s announcement of the latest novel series winner, but I’ll be honest. I felt a sink of disappointment when I learned they’d chosen “a football book.” Growing up in rural Texas, there are few things more important than high school football, which is great if you play and not so great when you don’t. I’ve served a youth’s sentence of Friday pep rallies and small-town player privilege, and I thought I’d had my fill of clapping for high school athletes. And maybe I have, but Grady is more than a football player, as asserted by his mother, who says, “I didn’t give you a number. I gave you a name.”

But for Grady, football is football, but football can also be an awakening. Playing in a Friday night football game is “like being born. Opening new eyes to a world I’d never known.” Although not all readers will have experienced putting on a jersey and a helmet and heading out onto the field, they will understand what it’s like to see the world anew, to want a stadium full of people to know that you are “strong enough, fast enough, good enough, tough enough.” Sure, Maynor is writing about football, and as far as I can tell, he does that well in terms of technicalities. But more important, Maynor is doing what all good writers and artists do: using the particular to reach out to something larger, something shared by those outside the specific experience.

And he entertains us, too, makes us laugh with dialogue so familiar I found myself reading out loud. On a visit to his grandmother’s to celebrate her birthday, Grady’s cousin Marcus says, “You ain’t supposed to be cooking.” Meemaw responds, “I know. I just couldn’t help it.” Grady puts a hand on his grandmother’s back. Like a teenager, he asks, “How’s it feel to be so old?” Meemaw answers, “Useless really.” These moments are as accurate as a blade’s edge. They are humorous and poignant. Like so many of our grandmothers, Meemaw can’t stop cooking, and like so many of our grandmothers, Meemaw really does feel a certain kind of futility.Grady might not see it yet, but most of the novel is about his finding some sort of purpose.

Along the way, Grady learns to navigate the complex relationship he has with his mother. At one point in the narrative, Grady’s mother says, “Feels like we haven’t talked in forever.” This is a point, and there are many, when Maynor’s choice of the first-person point of view is vital, because we see that Grady is thinking about his mother, that he is trying to communicate. He talks about the upcoming game, that the coach thinks it will be tough. His mom responds by telling him she’s proud of him like, Grady thinks, “she Page 224 →hadn’t heard me at all.” This is one of the most powerful exchanges in the novel. Here and elsewhere, the first-person perspective is essential to bridge the dissonance between what Grady is thinking and what he says and does. From the dialogue, we understand that Grady’s mother believes that her son is quiet and doesn’t want to talk to her, but the novel’s point of view shows us that Grady feels like his mother isn’t listening.

The turbulence in their relationship escalates as the narrative continues to unfold. On receiving some upsetting news about his mother, Grady storms out of the house. In this moment, he wants to escape everyone and everything, but because of the novel’s perspective, Maynor gives the reader permission to be right there with him. We see more than an angry teenager heading into the woods and sitting on a fallen log. We have access to Grady’s thoughts, that what we’re actually witnessing are his attempts to “calm myself by not thinking any thoughts … I wished I was a snake … I could shed my skin. Have a whole new hide, itching with possibility.”

Animals figure heavily into the book. It is set in rural South Carolina after all, and you might be surprised to learn that the cover of the book doesn’t feature a football or a field or a helmet, but an owl. I can’t say more than that. You’ll have to read the book to find out why.

With The Big Game Is Every Night, Maynor opens a door into a teenage boy’s world, and through this door, you, like me, might be a little startled to find a mirror, with familiar reflections—what it means to grow up, to try to heal the things that are really broken. With careful writing and thoughtful construction, Maynor develops a meaningful relationship between his main character and even this initially reluctant but at last deeply satisfied reader.

Landon Houle, Francis Marion University