Carry the Rock

Jay Jennings, a former reporter for Sports Illustrated and senior editor at the Oxford American, is a freelance writer who has contributed to the New York Times, Travel & Leisure, and many other outlets. He is the editor of Tennis and the Meaning of Life: A Literary Anthology of the Game and, most recently, the Library of America’s collection of the novels and other writings of Charles Portis. He lives in Little Rock with his wife and daughter.

“Jennings writes…with authority and power.”—Howard Bryant, New York Times Book Review“Carry the Rock transcends the season-on-the-brink genre.” —Eddie Dean, Wall Street Journal “We’re just a page or two into the prologue when we realize we’re in the hands of a discerning and expert storyteller. The sweeping opening gives way to a multi-tiered narrative that isn’t just great sportswriting, but chronicles the history of a team, a school and a city that, 50 years later, is still trying to come to terms with its most harrowing and/or calcifying event. This is not an undemanding story about a football team; it’s a rich portrait of a complicated place and its people.”—Arkansas Times“A native son juxtaposes passion for football and the tumultuous history of race relations in Little Rock. The result is a must-read page-turner.”—Minnijean Brown Trickey, Little Rock Nine member“A sweeping yet nuanced portrait of race in America— a picture of how far we have come since the Little Rock Nine made their historic stand and of how far we still have to go.”—Jonathan Mahler, author of Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning“Jennings has produced that rarest of things: A book about race and sports that avoids all the usual clichÉs. Unsentimental yet inspiring, Carry the Rock does what all books about race relations should attempt but few achieve. It tells the reader something he doesn’t know.”—Joe Queenan, author of True Believers: The Tragic Inner Life of Sports Fans and Closing Time: A Memoir