In the summer of 1978, Heather Dune Macadam, an aspiring young dancer with the Martha Graham troupe attended a workshop at a college outside New York. She was 18 years old: blonde, anorexic and beautiful. By chance, a footballer named Pele, the greatest player the game has ever seen, was at the same college campus training with the short-lived New York Cosmos. Out of this unlikely collision of dance and football, Macadam, the critically acclaimed author of Rena’s Promise and The Weeping Buddha, has fashioned a wonderful coming-of-age story that perfectly captures the spirit of that time; and the natural graciousness of the great Pele.
It’s made all the better for the fact that when she starts to date him, the dancer has never heard of footballer. This gives the story a freshness and innocence that puts it in a different league from the usual I-dated-a-celebrity story. In the memoir’s most touching scene, the American dancer and the Brazilian footballer compete to see who can do the best high-kicks or juggle a football on their knee. At the end of their summer together, her father breaks some shattering news and the dancer’s world comes crashing down.
If I were a screenwriter, I would snap it up tomorrow for a movie. – Simon Worrall