Perry Ashe

Under a Basketball Moon Perry Ashe

UNDER A BASKETBALL MOON is the coming-of-age story of Skip Walker, our narrator, the first coach to lead a HAAU (Historically African American University) to the NCAA's FINAL FOUR men's basketball championship.
Skip is a Charlestonian by birth, and he relates to readers that even though he lived in the city, he was always a country boy at heart. His story, in the beginning, mostly concerns his early family history and dynamics.
His father, a graduate of HAAU South Carolina A& M, a HAAU, is an overbearing ex-GI high school coach who rules his house with an iron hand. Skip's father and his friends, are competition-obsessed former HAAU sports lettermen who mostly dominate the first half of the book. Skip's mother plays a pivotal role, and he is devoted to his grandparents, who have a farm in the country, along the banks of the Toogoodoo River, thirty miles south of the Holy City.
The second half of the tale is mostly devoted to Skip's wife Veronica and their children. In a curious twist of fate, Veronica is a prominent labor attorney whose sons just happen to be the best high school basketball players on the planet. Her whole focus turns to amateurism and how it's been mishandled under the jurisdiction of the NCAA.
What happens next may even impact events in the real world.
Featuring cameo's by three POTUS' and a host of others, most notably, Janis Joplin.