Kipligat's chance

the long version

"John "Leeds" Kipligat is a seventeen-year-old Kenyan emigre living with his parents in a bleak Vancouver housing project. At the urging of his best friend, a fellow Kenyan named Kulvinder Sharma, he tries out for a local track club. Their goal: to run fast enough to get scholarships to American universities, and escape the poverty, family strife and mind-numbing routine of their lives." "Fast-paced and intense, Kipligat's Chance plunges us into the world of competitive running, and the enormous mental and physical demands of becoming a world-class athlete. Running as sport, running as escape: the lines quickly blur for Leeds and the unforgettable, motley group of kids who form his community. Each one of them burns it up on the track, running for, and maybe from, their very lives." "For Leeds, running churns memory, of the life in Kenya that he and his family were forced to flee, its only palpable legacy the deterioration of his parents' marriage, his mother's worsening health and his own newly discovered self-destructive tendencies. Leeds' struggle to accept and bear his history is the novel's thrumming heart."--BOOK JACKET.