A review by isabeau
The Golden Season by Madeline Kay Sneed

emotional reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.75

The Golden Season is an exploration of what it means to be "Other" in a community that has a strict definition of who you ought to be in order to be accepted. The question posed on the book's back cover -- "How do you love a place that doesn't love you back?" -- is one that I think most people living in marginalized identities have contemplated, myself included, and it was my interest in seeing how Sneed would go about answering it that made me pick up this book.

Those who may dread the promise of football talk should not be deterred: personally, I found the presence of football to be so naturally interwoven into the fabric of the story that, even if you don't care about football, you care about why the narrator cares about football. The sport is used as a device to articulate, reflect, and frame the characters' feelings. My own lack of football knowledge did not prevent me from appreciating the drama and intensity of the game scenes--because they mattered so much to the narrator, you found that it mattered to you, too, and that's a mark of good storytelling on Sneed's part. But then again, I am a big Friday Night Lights fan, so this assessment may be biased.

To the point of Sneed's storytelling--my god, her love of Texas is practically tangible in the way she writes it! Texas is its own living character in this book, and it was beautiful to read, to really feel Sneed's love for the place through Emmy and Steve's eyes. Having a character from the East coast there to set Texas in contrast was a clever, and important, way of highlighting that love of place; if the reader is someone who does not have their own love of place, that character serves as a good stand-in for them to try and really understand Emmy's/Sneed's perspective. For some people (myself included), you can't just give up on a place, even if it doesn't treat you how you wish it did. That place isn't just home, it's a friend--it's family.

Emmy's journey toward finding an answer for how to love a place that doesn't love you was at times gentle, at times demanding, and altogether relatable. Those interested in the intersections between LGBT identities and religion, especially set south of the Mason-Dixon line, should give The Golden Season a read! I think that any reader will come away from this book having broadened their own worldview in some way because of how it presents identities that are so easily written off as backward. This book presents nuance, without forgiving the ways in which those identities (e.g. Southern Baptists) can be harmful. How do you love a place that doesn't love you back? How do you love a God who you have been taught won't love you for being you? Love is a dynamic thing, says Sneed, always learning, always growing, and it encourages us to grow with it.