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Summary
Summary
At the 1936 Berlin Olympics the beautiful Sydney Stringfellow begins an intense love affair with a German but the affair abruptly ends when political forces tear them apart.
Author Notes
Benjamin Franklin Deford III was born in Baltimore, Maryland on December 16, 1938. He graduated from Princeton University in 1962. He began his career at Sports Illustrated as a researcher. He wrote for Sports Illustrated for more than 30 years, appeared on HBO's Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel for 22 years, and gave 1,656 weekly commentaries for NPR's Morning Edition. He was a six-time Sportswriter of the Year, a National Magazine Award recipient, a member of the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Hall of Fame, and the first sportswriter to be given a National Humanities Medal. He wrote both fiction and nonfiction books including two memoirs entitled Alex: The Life of a Child and Over Time: My Life as a Sportswriter. He died on May 28, 2017 at the age of 78.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
When American swimmer Sydney Stringfellow arrives at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, she never expects to fall in love with a handsome young German, but she does. When politics separate them, she goes home to nurse her broken heart and meets Jimmy, a kind young American who restores her faith in love and marries her before being shipped off to the Pacific theater of WWII. When Horst shows up on her doorstep, though, Sydney is torn and must decide what she is willing to do for love. Told as a memoir, Deford's newest is entertaining and thought provoking. He has a superb sense of character and period, and readers will at once feel drawn into the turbulent times. The memoir device, while overused in many books, is put to excellent effect, allowing readers to easily identify with Sydney's son and interviewer, Teddy. The surprising twist will catch readers off guard but not leave them feeling cheated. This is a poignant story, utterly charming and enjoyable. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Sportswriter and novelist Deford (The Entitled: A Tale of Modern Baseball, 2008, etc.) returns to fiction with a love story set at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and stateside during World War II.The author scored his greatest success with the 1981 football-themed novel Everybody's All American, which was made into a movie starring Dennis Quaid and Jessica Lange. In this, his first novel since The Other Adonis (2001), he combines sports and fiction once againthis time focusing on the world of Olympic swimming. Sydney Stringfellow is an 18-year-old American swimmer who falls into an affair with German Horst Gerhardt while at the 1936 Games. Sydney returns to the States and later receives a breakup letter from Horst; heartbroken, she moves on with her life and gets married to an Americanonly to later learn a secret about Horst, eventually leading Sydney to commit a terrible act. The story is told by a cancer-stricken 86-year-old Sydney to her daughter Teddy in 2004. Teddy narrates the novel in the present day, remembering her mother's tale and interjecting her own reactions to her mother's shocking secrets. Sydney's recollections, though at times melodramatic, are engaging, particularly when Deford portrays real-life historical figuressuch as Eleanor Holm, the talented and confident American swimmer who was suspended from the 1936 competition, and Leni Riefenstahl, the brilliant and chilly German filmmaker. He also effectively invokes the atmosphere of 1936 Nazi Germany as World War II loomed. But the framing device of the novel can be distracting, and some may find the modern-day scenes less interesting than the glamorous flashback material.An uneven but entertaining historical love story. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
This book sounds so simple: Sydney Stringfellow, nearing death, sits her son down and tells him about a special, long-ago time of her life. But Deford's beautifully written novel is a bit more complex than that. It introduces us to two Sydneys, the elderly-but-sprightly woman dying of cancer and the teenage girl, graceful and naive, who decided, against pretty tall odds, that she would swim for her country in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. This is one of those novels that defies categorization. There's romance in it, but it's not a love story. It's set, partly, against the backdrop of a world war, but it's not a war story. There is heartrending tragedy, but it's not a tragedy. The story doesn't fully reveal itself until the end, when Deford ties all the threads together, showing us finally what he's been building before our eyes. This multilayered, finely crafted, and elegantly constructed novel will appeal both to readers of historical fiction and to those who crave any kind of writing that is genuinely inspiring.--Pitt, David Copyright 2010 Booklist
Library Journal Review
An award-winning sports journalist and versatile author, Deford (Everybody's All American) has written a work of enthralling historical fiction told in the form of a mother-to-son memoir. Dying of cancer at age 87, Sydney Stringfellow Branch begins telling her 62-year-old son her life story, starting with how she developed her prowess as a backstroke swimmer and attended the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. While there, she fell in love with a young German named Horst, an assistant to director Leni Reifenstahl, who had been commissioned by Hitler to make a film about the games. While Sydney's escapades in Berlin bring her into contact with Nazi politicos, most of her time is spent with Horst, as their love blossoms. Inevitably, Sydney must return to America, where she slowly initiates a move from her Eastern Shore Maryland home to New York City and then finds a job and joins the Women's Swimming Association (WSA). With her focus now on competing in the 1940 Tokyo Olympics, Sydney does not foresee that destiny and impending war will bring further surprising changes to her life. Verdict Deford slyly teaches readers something about 1930s-1940s history while also writing convincingly about love and war. Sydney is a spirited narrator whose fictional memoir is sprinkled with innumerable colloquialisms and many reflective of the era. Highly recommended.-M. Neville, Trenton P.L., NJ (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
