"In the summer of 1996, Joe McGinniss, the author of such nonfiction bestsellers as The Selling of the President, Fatal Vision, Blind Faith, and The Last Brother, set out for the remote Italian village of Castel di Sangro, located deep within the forbidding and isolated region of the Abruzzo."--BOOK JACKET.

"His goal was to spend a season with the village soccer team, which only weeks before had accomplished the feat - hailed throughout Italy as a "miracle" - of winning promotion to the second-highest professional league in the land. Though Castel di Sangro had only five thousand inhabitants, its team would now compete against those from such cities as Genoa, Turin, Padua, and Venice in a fight to keep its miracle alive."--BOOK JACKET.

"Almost immediately Joe McGinniss was embroiled in a small-town drama that had less to do with a game played by men kicking a ball than with hope, fear, love, loss, and almost unbearable suspense."--BOOK JACKET.