This is my second Kincaid read, having started with "Verbena". Having liked it, I was surprised upon perusing amazon.com to find "Balls", and its summary enticed me to order it. I read it in two days.

The first person narrative as told by the women of the story, with Dixie as the principle story teller, makes the reader feel at home, as if listening to the story in video clips, a sort of oral history documentary.

Experiencing Dixie's maturation from a privileged only child status to the unswervingly loyal, and mostly inept, bride to the veteran wife who maintains her life and her children in the absence of her workaholic coach husband is very touching. It is obvious that Dixie's life mirrors the lives of many women who marry for love, and end up always being second best in their husband's lives, the lives of men who place their career first and foremost.

I found it especially ironic when Lilly, the family maid and mother of super successful professional football player, Jett, described the world of coaches and football players as being that of men who never really grow up. That is so true! It is a big business beyond a naive fan's understanding.

Living in a football state, having sons who never measured up to the athleticism of their coach father's fondest dreams for them, I clearly understand the emptiness of the life Dixie lives in "Balls". No matter how much she maintains her coach's wife status with dignity and support, her union with Mac Gibbs is a shell, a guise, a front for the public and her children.

I especially loved Dixie's devotion to her Christian ways, including huge donations to Unity Prayer, but found great pleasure in her development as a writer and her refusal to further fabricate the Christian legend of her warrior husband coach. The only thing Dixie did not succumb to was the use of the zodiac to help her husband's team win. And of that, even I was guilty while living the life of a coach's wife.

There is warmth and humor and some earnest Southern culture in "Balls" and the legendary importance of high school and college sports is right on track. The men, black and white, are not dark, despicable characters, no more than their women are shrews. The integration of the races in athletics is important in this story and the place of football as a stepping stone from poverty to wealth underlies the larger cultural issue. There are shades of moral turpitude being addressed, not just clear cut sanctimonious preachings. In other words, the story is very real.

Kincaid's work is not as polished as it may become, but this is a good start in her writer's portfolio. All coaches' wives should read this novel, if they can stand it.