Legs Hearts Minds

In this raw, potent memoir of heartbreak and the life-saving power of fandom, an award-winning sports journalist tells the story of how he hit rock bottom—and the unlikely, unlucky soccer team that would carry him through

Returning home from a month-long work trip covering the European championships for ESPN, worn out by life but too jet-lagged to fall asleep, Chris Jones opened his wife’s laptop intending to get a little writing done. Instead, he found a series of text messages that would burn his marriage—and his world—to the ground. “In the span of twenty minutes,” Jones writes, “I lost my wife and my best friend. In the coming weeks, I would lose my house, half my money, and some equal measure of my boys. That wicked morning, that terrible dawn, I watched the sun peel back the longest night of my life, and I felt my anger already making room for sadness, fear, disbelief. I was forty-two years old. Nothing true of my life would be true again.”

Overwhelmed by sorrow and often terrifying rage, Jones contemplated suicide, not for the first time. He fought to carry on, for his two sons if no one else, only to end up in an emergency room, begging a doctor for help. That was the start of his way back. He embarked on a journey to understand who he is and the mistakes he has made, to let go of anger and find forgiveness, and to give himself over to something outside of himself: an underdog English soccer team from an underdog northern town called Burnley, beloved by his grandfather, forever destined to also-ran status. In some ways, following Burnley mirrored the ups—and downs—of the rest of his life, and Jones began taking the team’s lessons as his own. Together, they would navigate the long journey from hope to despair back to hope again. 

How does one rebuild a life? Can something as simple as soccer give someone a reason to live, offering solace and ultimately meaning? In this searing, beautiful memoir, Chris Jones reveals how his love for the game brought him joy, connection, and purpose when he needed it most.“This is the truest book about sports fandom that has been or ever will be written. But that’s an almost incidental byproduct, so much narrative exhaust, of a story that is so much bigger. So much more universal. This is a book about being a human being on planet Earth.”—Wright Thompson, author of The Cost of These DreamsChris Jones, a former writer-at-large for Esquire, has won two National Magazine Awards. He has also written for The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal Magazine, Golf Digest, Grantland, and ESPN. His work was included in the Best American Sports Writing anthology six times. Born in London, he lives in Port Hope, Canada, with his two boys.