<i>Stephen Florida</i> Reveals the Dark Toll of Athletic Greatness

In 2012, the NFL linebacker Jovan Belcher took his life in front of his teammates after fatally shooting his girlfriend. Months earlier, the Hall-of-Famer Junior Seau killed himself three years after retirement. They, like many other football players, showed symptoms of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease caused by repeated blows to the head. Signs of the disease are not exclusive to the sport (or to athletes). Last year, 12 former wrestlers filed a class-action suit against the WWE over the “long-term neurological injuries” they sustained as employees.

Such developments may dim, or at least complicate, the glow of triumph often promised to players in exchange for their bodily sacrifice. In his debut novel, , Gabe Habash examines the dark side of this transaction through his eponymous character, an intensely competitive young wrestler at a college in North Dakota. Following Stephen through