Killer Kowalski Takes the Mat

When in elementary school a P.E. teacher showed Biggie Bluestone a single leg takedown, it was love at first sight. From that moment, Biggie has gradually morphed into the running, lifting, perpetually training fiend that he is today at seventeen, a contender for the 1971 Illinois High School Wrestling Championship. He has an alter-ego - Killer Kowalski, a fifties-era professional wrestler with a penchant for throat stomping, though off the mat, reputedly, a genuinely nice guy. No one knows about Killer Kowalski - not Biggie's parents - educators who cannot fathom wherefrom this obsessive son of theirs has spawned - not Biggie's teachers, who see only a musing, if muscular, kid who when called upon expresses a high degree of abstract thinking - not Biggie's best friends, Wing and Luigi, whom Biggie pins every day at practice before donning his rubber suit and running laps around the track so that he can work up a real sweat.

Biggie wants only to keep the world at arm's length so that he can concentrate on his goal. He has taped a photo from the newspapers of his nemesis, Rick Berkenmeier, to the refrigerator door. Berky won the state championship last year as a junior and is the one obstacle between himself and this year's championship. Berky has had all the advantages - older brothers who were themselves state champions, and who do nothing all day, Biggie imagines, but drill Berky on cradles and crossface half nelsons - a mother who never minds that Berky starves himself to make weight before every match - a coach who was actually a champion wrestler himself, unlike Biggie's coach, Wetzel, whose back acts up if Biggie even looks at him. For instruction, Biggie relies on a pictorial manual of wrestling holds.

But the world intrudes. Biggie's younger sister, Giselle, is involved in an accident that results in the death of her best friend, and the kids at school have ostracized her. He must find a way to lend her some of the cachet he has garnered as a star athlete. One night, during his six-mile run on icy streets after dinner, a car slides through a stop sign and hits Biggie. Biggie's shoulder is injured, but Biggie is unstoppable. He does take a moment to yell at the girl behind the wheel, but when he sees her sobbing through the car window, of course, he has a change of heart and checks to make sure she is okay, admonishes her to be more careful, and runs on. The girl, Gloria Serpentino, becomes yet another distraction for Biggie, though a welcome one, it turns out.

The massiveness of Biggie's consciousness, accumulated throughout the novel, measures up to the drama of the state tournament, where internal and external forces collide. The result is a novel rich in themes of loss, love, friendship, and dedication-but above all, honor.