Head Fake

<p><strong style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Longlisted for the 2025 PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel and Named to </strong><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Kirkus Reviews'</em><strong style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)> Best Books of 2024</strong></p><p><em>Head Fake</em> is about how laughter can save us. <strong>-Chris Rock comedian actor</strong></p><p>An absorbing uplifting tale of finding light and self-worth in adversity's darkest depths.<strong>-<em>Kirkus Reviews (starred review)</em></strong></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Mikey makes everything a joke even the clinical depression he's struggled with for years. After a run of failed jobs he becomes the unlikely basketball coach at a high school for high-risk offenders who are experiencing mental illness. The position becomes suddenly available after the team tried to strangle their last coach.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(26 26 26 1)>Every instinct tells Mikey to get as far away from this school as possible. Coaching these kids who have been arrested for who-knows-what would be difficult for a </span><em style=color: rgba(26 26 26 1)>normie</em><span style=color: rgba(26 26 26 1)>. For Mikey </span><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>it could cause another breakdown and force him right back to living on the street. </span><span style=color: rgba(26 26 26 1)>But he knows that if he has any chance to make his twenty-sixth birthday he needs to keep this job even if the school board wants him fired and the students would rather fight each other than play ball. </span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(26 26 26 1)>This poignant hilarious and sometimes uncomfortable novel proves that even the most damaged of us can emerge victorious.</span></p>