BOOK REVIEW

Author: Kristen Laine

Title: American Band: music, dreams, and coming of age in the Heartland

In ten words or less: Spend a year with a high school marching band.

Review: Laine tells the story of a year in the life of a high school marching band at Concord High School in Elkhart, Indiana. Over 240 students are preparing to defend their state title. It's a remarkable insight into the world of competitive high school marching. Max Jones is the band director, and it is his final year at Concord before he takes a prestigious job at Purdue. The story follows several students--one whose mother has terminal cancer, another who hopes to attend West Point, a young woman who is interested in Israel and Judaism, though there are no Jews attending the school. It is a sampling of life in small town middle America.

The author tries to show how the group grapples with African American music and struggles to play their instruments like black jazz players. There is no sex and no swearing--is this typical of a high school these days?

Why bother? An intimate but selective look at teenagers involved in a competitive music program. Contrast these teens to the ones in William Gilder's "Where the game matters most: a last championship season in Indiana high school basketball," or Ben Joravsky's "Hoop dreams: a true story of hardship and triumph."