Synopses & Reviews
"My family doesn't do happy endings. We do sad endings or frustrating endings or no endings at all. We are hardwired to expect the next interruption or disappearance or broken promise."
Hope Solo is the face of the modern female athlete. She is fearless, outspoken, and the best in the world at what she does: protecting the goal of the U.S. women's soccer team. Her outsized talent has led her to the pinnacle of her sport—the Olympics and the World Cup—and made her into an international celebrity who is just as likely to appear on ABC's Dancing with the Stars as she is on the covers of Sports Illustrated, ESPN The Magazine, and Vogue. But her journey—which began in Richland, Washington, where she was raised by her strong-willed mother on the scorched earth of defunct nuclear testing sites—is similarly haunted by the fallout of her family history. Her father, a philanderer and con man, was convicted of embezzlement when Solo was an infant. She lost touch with him as he drifted out of prison and into homelessness. By the time they reunited, years later, in the parking lot of a grocery store, she was an All-American goalkeeper at the University of Washington and already a budding prospect for the U.S. national team. He was living in the woods.
Despite harboring serious doubts even about the provenance of her father's last name (and her own), Solo embraces him as fiercely as she pursues her dreams of being a world-class soccer player. When those dreams are threatened by her standing within the national team, as when she was famously benched in the semifinals of the 2007 World Cup after four shutouts and spoke her piece publicly, we see a woman of uncompromising independence and hard-won perseverance navigate the petty backlash against her. For the first time, she tells her version of that controversial episode, and offers with it a full understanding of her hard-scrabble life.
Moving, sometimes shocking, Solo is a portrait of an athlete finding redemption. This is the Hope Solo whom few have ever glimpsed.
Signed poster inside.
Synopsis
The Glass Castle meets
A League of Their Own in
Solo, a candid and moving memoir about family, loss, and reconciliation from Hope Solo, the supremely talented, headline-making goalkeeper for the U.S. womens national soccer team.
During the 2011 Womens World Cup, Solo became an idol, role model, and sex symbol to a new generation of young American sports enthusiasts, inspiring the kind of intense devotion not seen since the days of Mia Hamm.
An Olympic gold medalist and arguably Americas sexiest athlete, Hope has been featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated (twice), in ESPN: The Magazine, and as a contestant on the hit ABC television show Dancing with the Stars, and her poignant, compelling, and profoundly inspiring personal history will score big with her legion of fans.
Synopsis
Soccer sensation and Olympic gold medalist Hope Solo tells the story of her challenging journey to become a world famous goalie. Her strength and fearlessness have helped her overcome many obstacles, from growing up with an unreliable father to returning to the field after a major injury. In her own words, Hope discusses her relationship with her dad, the mental fortitude and love of the game that he instilled in her, and her continued motivation. Game after game, Hope is driven to succeed. Her charisma and spirit make Hope an unbelievably strong role model for athletes of any age. Hope Solo never plays it safe, and her riveting story proves that sometimes that's a good thing.
This is a special adaptation for young people of Hope Solo's upcoming adult memoir, Solo.
About the Author
Hope Solo, one of the most charismatic athletes in America, is widely regarded as the best women's goalkeeper in the world. A two-time Olympic gold medalist, she has been a member of the U.S. national team since 2000 and has appeared on the covers of
Sports Illustrated and
ESPN The Magazine. A prominent spokeswoman for Gatorade and Nike, she starred on the hit reality show
Dancing with the Stars. She lives in Seattle, Washington.
Ann Killion is a columnist with the San Francisco Chronicle. She has covered the past ten Olympics and the last three Women's World Cups for SportsIllustrated.com and the San Jose Mercury News.