Begun as an article that appeared in the New York Times Magazine, In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle offers a riveting close-up of the girls on a high school basketball team whose passion for the sport is rivaled only by their loyalty to one another. Reminiscent of John McPhee's A Sense of Where You Are and H. G. Bissinger's Friday Night Lights, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Madeleine Blais's book takes the reader through a singular season in the history of the Lady Hurricanes of Amherst, Massachusetts.Madeleine Blais takes us from tryouts to practices during the regular season, up through the final championship game against the mighty Hillies from Haverhill. The result is an astoundingly moving narrative that captures the complexities of girls' experiences in high school, in sports, and in our society.It is a compelling, funny, and touching literary exploration of one group of girls' fight for success and, perhaps most of all, respect. In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle is both a dramatization of the success of the women's movement and a testimony to all the changes that have yet to come. Read Less