Precious and the Boo Hag Book

Before this book, I knew about F.X. Toole from reading his short story collection originally published as Rope Burns; better known as Million Dollar Baby: Stories from the Corner from the story in it that became an Academy Award-winning movie.

He was seventy when that collection was published. He did not live to see the movie. He did not live to see this book in print. He had a bad heart. He carried his 900 page manuscript of Pound For Pound to the hospital when he went in for emergency surgery, asking the doctor to get him enough time to finish the book. That did not happen.

Toole's children turned to Nat Sobel and James Wade to prepare the manuscript for publication, although they are credited for this only in the forward by James Ellroy. The voice in the story is all Toole. He sings from first page to last, and the reader can feel the emotion that must have been driving him to get one more sentence down, one more paragraph, one more chapter before the time came when he would be down for the count.

The book is powerful. We follow Dan Cooley through some of the most intense days of his life, as he struggles with loss of loved ones, loss of faith, loss of nearly everything that means anything to him. We meet 'Chicky' Garza, a young boxer with a connection to Dan that he has no idea about. And we get to know the world of boxing. How to move, how to punch, to jab, how to appreciate the beauty of the sport even while deploring its ugly side. Oh, and let's not forget Barky, who came along at exactly the time he was needed and proved his worth more than once.

I could babble on forever here, but mostly I want to say that whether you like boxing, loathe it or don't care one way or another, read this book. It is a human story: raw, real, hardly ever politically correct, but intensely moving and unforgettable.