Legs Hearts Minds

Loss and Its Remedies

De: Chris Jones

Narrado por: Chris Jones

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 long trip for ESPN, too jet-lagged to sleep, Chris Jones opened his wife’s laptop 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 and months, 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 rage, Jones contemplated suicide. He fought to carry on, for his two sons if no one else, only to end up in an emergency room. To return to himself, 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: an underdog English soccer team from an underdog northern town called Burnley, forever destined to also-ran status. 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 do we rebuild a life? Can something as simple as soccer give us a reason to live, offering solace and ultimately meaning? In this searing memoir, Chris Jones reveals how his love for the game brought him joy, connection, and purpose when he needed it most.

Reseñas de la Crítica

“Legs Hearts Minds might just be the greatest fan memoir ever written—blazingly honest and sneakily soulful, it finally captures in words the redemptive power of sports.”—Franklin Foer, author of How Soccer Explains the World

“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 Dreams

“Chris Jones has suffered dearly, and the pages you are about to read bleed it. Legs Hearts Minds is the blessed convergence of brilliant writing and blistering truthfulness. The tears come. First out of sadness, then out of joy.”—Jeff Pearlman, author of Only God Can Judge Me