Barry Locke, Half-Back

A new boy at an American preparatory school makes the football squad, loses his place, and gets it back by a route he had not considered. Ralph Henry Barbour wrote scores of school sports novels and understood that the interesting part is the bench rather than the touchdown. The play-by-play is accurate for its decade and the school politics are better. Fifty-five plates of American painting, from Winslow Homer and Thomas Cole to Eastman Johnson, carry the season's outdoor light and autumn fields alongside the text.