Misty: Digging Deep in Volleyball and Life
The case can be made that Misty May-Treanor is the most accomplished female athlete of her generation: two state volleyball championships in high school, an NCAA championship in college, domination of women's professional beach volleyball, and two Olympic gold medals. She was the child of two world-class athletes and came to embody their competitiveness and discipline. Much of her autobiography reads like Sports Bio 101: descriptions of important competitions, training routines, wins, losses, and rehabbing from injuries. Still, coauthor Steeg, a senior writer at Sports Illustrated, keeps the narrative flowing and injects enough humor to maintain interest. When May-Treanor steps away from sports, she recounts difficult episodes in her personal lilfe, such as her father's alcoholism and her mother's 2002 death from cancer. The account of her mother's long illness and the void left by her death is touchingly honest and a reminder that success does not immunize one against life's most painful moments. Certainly of general interest to sports fans and especially valuable and inspirational to young female athletes. --Wes Lukowsky