Title: The last magic summer
First published: 1996
Description: Peter Gent grew up in Bangor, Michigan (population 2,000), one of the poorest towns in one of the poorest counties in Michigan. Gent fell in love with sports in Bangor, and eventually left the town for a roller-coaster career - first as a star football player for the Dallas Cowboys, then as a best-selling author and Hollywood screenwriter with North Dallas Forty.

But Gent crashed and burned out in the fast lane. A wrenching divorce was followed by a brutal custody battle that tore his family apart. When it was finally over, he managed to rescue his six-year-old son, Carter, from the wreckage, and returned home to raise his boy in the simple, authentic environment of a small American town.

The Last Magic Summer is a poignant memoir of the slow process by which Gent and Carter repaired their lives. They found healing in the game of baseball: Peter felt that the best way he could spend real, quality time with his boy, and impart whatever wisdom he had gathered, was to coach Carter, which he did for ten baseball summers.

Carter has grown into a young man, and in the fall he will leave home for college. This is his last summer with his dad, who is himself rounding fifty and facing the loneliness of the second half of life. After fighting so hard to save his boy from the mistakes of his own youth, and after having raised him as a single father for ten years, Gent must come to terms with the most painful part of parenthood: letting your child go.
Subjects: Youth league baseball, Coaching, Baseball, Fathers and sons, Parenting - Fatherhood, Little league baseball, Divorced fathers
Places: Michigan, Bangor
People: Carter Gent, Peter Gent
LC classification: GV880.8 .G46 1996