Review by Booklist Review
A photojournalist for New Orleans' Times-Picayune, Jackson was scouting a homeless encampment in the summer of 1990 when he found Jackie Wallace sleeping on a makeshift bed. Friendly and authentic, the former NFL player told him he was the very story Jackson was looking for; he was right, and their connection was cemented. With a reporter's precision, Jackson here re-creates Wallace's life from its beginnings in segregated New Orleans. A gifted student and athlete, Wallace landed at the University of Arizona before being drafted into the NFL and playing in multiple Super Bowls. By the time he was 29, though, he was unceremoniously out of a job. When he met Jackson a decade later, Wallace would be homeless by choice and handling serious addiction. The 1990 story would change everything, but this is no easy before-and-after tale. From football victories to enduring injuries, valiant recovery to lost years, Jackson pieces together Wallace's story with care. Bound by faith, his biography is a painstaking portal into the human condition and how we care for one another.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this raw account, Pulitzer Prize--winning photojournalist Jackson tells the story of his friend Jackie Wallace, a former NFL cornerback whose life unraveled after he retired. Jackson vividly recounts his first meeting with Wallace in the early 1990s when Wallace, who at the time was homeless and living under the Pontchartrain Expressway in New Orleans, told him, "You ought to do a story about me." Jackson then skillfully describes Wallace's sensational athletic career--he played in two Super Bowls in the 1970s--and the setbacks and tragedies he's faced, including the death of his mother, his struggles with CTE due to chronic head trauma from his time in the NFL, and heroin addiction. The narrative's strength lies in Jackson's lack of shyness in taking on the seedier parts of Wallace's life, namely his abuse of both substances and people, as outlined in tales of addiction-fueled self-destruction and domestic violence ("Jackie is not a man to be idolized or championed. He is a deeply flawed and broken man--a cautionary tale if I've ever known one"). Gut-wrenching yet hopeful, Jackson's work is a bracing look at the struggles and triumphs on the road to redemption. (Aug.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
A photojournalist at the New Orleans Times-Picayune who was part of a team that won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, Jackson was snapping a picture of a homeless addict when the man said, "You ought to do a story about me." The addict turned out to be Jackie Wallace, a former NFL star who played in three Super Bowls. Jackson, who befriended Wallace, here examines Wallace's life and his tumble downward with the end of his career and his mother's death while also looking frankly at his chances for recovery. With a 100,000-copy first printing.
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
The emotional tale of a "Super Bowl hero" who ended up homeless in his hometown of New Orleans. The story of how Jackie Wallace was lost and found--and lost and found again--is about many things, none of them simple: racism, professional sports, New Orleans, addiction, and the gaping holes in the societal safety net that even someone who was once deemed so successful can fall through. It's also about the transformational power of journalism; Jackson, a freelance photojournalist who worked for three decades for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, was profoundly changed by his work with Wallace. As Jackson's newspaper article went viral, it moved and inspired countless readers to examine their own lives--and to remain connected and get clean or stay clean. Though Wallace was by no means a household name in the NFL, he was on the roster of three teams that made the Super Bowl, and he played in two of them. His light was brighter in his native New Orleans, where he was the star quarterback on the first team from a black high school to compete against white players. At the University of Arizona, where he enrolled in 1970, his coach "didn't need another quarterback, especially a black one," so Wallace switched to cornerback and eventually became a first-team All-American--and then a second-round draft pick in the NFL. The author found him while shooting a series on homelessness; Wallace suggested, "You ought to do a story about me." The rest of the story is consistently complex and absorbing, as Jackson chronicles how Wallace cycled through rehab and relapse and a series of failed jobs and relationships. The author continued to stay in touch, more or less, before writing the follow-up story about losing Wallace, finding him again, and then losing him again. There are few easy answers here, but there are glimmers of hope. A rich and rewarding narrative about the possibilities--and the challenges--of redemption. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
