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Friday Night Lights

Ten years have passed since the publication of Friday Night Lights, and still, its words continue to influence and reverberate beyond anything I could have ever imagined. Nearly half a million copies are in print. The book is used in dozens of high schools and universities across the country. Barely a week goes by even now without getting a call or comment about it. Over the past decade I have heard strange and remarkable stories of the book's impact--a man who left his job in Brooklyn so he could become a football coach in Texas, a songwriter who wrote a moving ballad inspired by the book, teenagers forsaking Florida to make spring break pilgrimages to Odessa. When readers tell me they have been touched by this book in a way that no other book has ever touched them, their words of praise leave me humbled, but also make me wonder if I have become the writing equivalent of the high school football hero, destined to spend the rest of my life trying to get back to a moment and place that ...

Posted by: Carmen hershman

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