The Foxhole Court

**By Nora Sakavic**

*Estimated Reading Time: 18 minutes*

**What This Story Explores**

The cost of being seen. The violence that shapes us and the violence we choose. The strange algebra of trust between people who have been broken by others. The possibility that a sport can become a lifeline, and that a team can become something closer to a family than blood ever was.

**Who This Book Is For**

Readers who want a story about survival that does not flinch. Readers who understand that sometimes the most dangerous thing a person can do is stop running. Readers who have ever found themselves unexpectedly at home in a place they never meant to stay.

Neil Josten has been running for eight years. He has burned through twenty-two identities since his mother died, dragging him across the country and away from the shadow of his father, a man known in certain circles as the Butcher of Baltimore. Neil knows the rules of survival: trust no one, form no attachments, leave before anyone can ask questions. He has become very good at disappearing. Then a coach from a small South Carolina university shows up in the dusty Arizona town where Neil is finishing his senior year of high school. The coach has seen a tape of Neil playing Exy, a brutal, fast-paced sport that Neil loves with a desperation he cannot afford. The coach offers him a five-year contract. The coach's team includes Kevin Day, the most famous Exy player in the country, a man Neil knew as a child in a life he has spent eight years trying to forget. The premise sounds like the setup for a sports story, and in some ways it is. But *The Foxhole Court* is not really about winning games. It is about what happens when a person who has been invisible decides, against every survival instinct, to become visible. It is about the moment when the thing you love most becomes the thing most likely to destroy you. Nora Sakavic wrote the All for the Game series as an exploration of trauma, loyalty, and the strange bonds that form between people who have been damaged by the world. The novel does not soften its edges. Its characters are jagged, often unlikable, frequently self-destructive. They drink too much, lie too easily, and hurt each other in ways both casual and deliberate. Yet beneath the violence and the sharp dialogue, there is something tender struggling to surface: the possibility that people who have been abandoned can choose to stay for one another. The tone is tense and claustrophobic, even in its quieter moments. Neil narrates with the wariness of someone who has spent years reading every room…