A review by dashadashahi
Crossroads: My Story of Tragedy and Resilience as a Humboldt Bronco by Kaleb Dahlgren

2.0

I really didn't know how to phrase my thoughts for this book. Dahlgren survived a horrific and unnecessary accident that upset the hockey world and the country at large. He rightfully deserves a space to tell his story. And while the writing of this book suffers from repetitiveness and heavy-handed cliches I am glad that he wrote this book. I felt genuine emotion when he spoke of his father's health struggles and the teammates he lost. Yet, the book is filled with a lack of introspection for most other things, something I really expect and look for when reading a memoir. He states that he believes if you work hard enough you can achieve a lot. But this just .... isn't true. It's a myth of liberal meritocracy that is based wholly on different types of privileges. That is just one example of the juvenile perspective presented in this book. Perhaps if he wrote this book further in the future it would succeed in being introspective in this regard. I wish I liked this as much as all the hockey world's biggest stars did (as evidenced by the Hayley Wickenheiser, Wayne Gretzky, Mitchell Marner, and James Duthie's words of praise scattered on the front and back cover), but I just didn't.