Wrestling with Honor

by David Klass

Champion high school wrestler Ron Woods faces a soul-searching season when he refuses to retake a mandatory drug test he has failed. This decision affects every area of his life, including his feelings about his father, who died in Vietnam, and his first tentative romance.

Genres: High School, Young Adult

200 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

David Klass is the author of many young adult novels, including You Don’t Know Me, Dark Angel, and Firestorm (The Caretaker Trilogy). He is also a Hollywood screenwriter, having written more than twenty-five action screenplays, including Kiss the Girls, starring Morgan Freeman and Ashley Judd, Walking Tall, starring The Rock, and Desperate Measures, starring Michael Keaton and Andy Garcia. Klass grew up in a family that loved literature and theater—his parents were both college professors and writers—but he was a reluctant reader, preferring sports to books. But he started loving the adventure stories his parents would bring home from the library—particularly Jack London, Robert Louis Stevenson and Alexandre Dumas. After his sister twice won a story contest in Seventeen magazine, Klass decided he would win it too, and when he was a senior in high school, he did, publishing his first story, “Ringtoss,” in the magazine. He studied at Yale University, where he won the Veech Award for Best Imaginative Writing. He taught English in Japan, and wrote his first novel, The Atami Dragons, about that experience. He now lives in New York with his wife and two children.

http://us.macmillan.com/author/davidk...

Reviews

[Benny Schlosser · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not very accurate to wrestling, when the match ends in a tie, it goes to overtime, no judges that decide the match. The diolage was cringy and unrealistic. The main character annoyed me throughout the book, just take the drug test and stop being a bitch about it. I did enjoy the beginning of the story, Ron’s personal life with his Kris, and the part about him learning about his father. This book annoyed me a bit being a wrestler and there being so many things that are inaccurate about the sport.

[Jay · Rating 4 out of 5]

The best wrestling book I have read. Fairly relatable to real-life high school wrestling. I didn't love the ending, but otherwise, it's a decent story.

I liked it more than Vision Quest.

Vision Quest

[Nelson Sanchez · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is very emotional and intense. It's the perfect story for someone who really likes wrestling and who is also interested in a short love story. Ron isn't like any other teenage wrestler. He is known for his "perfection." He is the straightest kid you will ever meet. Ron has never tasted a drop of alcohol nor has he smoked a joint in his life. He ends up failing a drug test and for that reason he won't be able to wrestle at all. His worst enemy confronts him telling him stuff about beating him up and destroying him.