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Ten Points - A Memoir
by Bill Strickland
Hyperion
ISBN 1-4013-0258-0
Published July 2007 - Hardcover - 241 pages - $23.95

Not a bad book from one self-described White Trash.  You'd have thought having an alcoholic/drug addict as a father (and worse), this boy wouldn't amount to much.  You'd be wrong.  Although harboring a secret so personal for most of his life, he eloquently spells out his life in this book.  It's about the promise he made to his daughter to score ten points in the cycle races he rode in, about his abusive childhood that haunted him, his love for his wife and daughter, and of course, about cycling itself.  When he described his riding in a bike race in chapter six, you could visualize being there, in the throng, in the moment.  Being a bike rider myself - a necessity rather than for fun or competition - I understood a few things he talked about his bikes, especially when things went wrong.  I didn't understand the mechanics (a friend does my bike repairs), but I get the knocks and noises bikes can make.  Interspersed in this book, you are suddenly thrown into a different time and place, as he relates some of the abuse he suffered at the hands of his father.  Some of it is rather shocking.  He relates how his father manipulated him, covered his tracks by blaming others (and getting them to think it was them), and continued his abuse freely.  O, my god - if ever there was a man who never should have been a parent (the father, obviously), this is he.
Conclusion - A triumph.