The best middle grade sports fiction I’ve read in a long time. Ghost is a book about running, literally running track and metaphorically running away form circumstances and difficulties of life, trying to run away from oneself.

Seventh grader Castle Creshaw has given himself a nickname, Ghost. Ever since his drunken, abusive dad fired a gun at him and his mom, Ghost knows how to run—and run fast. He thinks of himself as a basketball player, since that’s the game with most credibility and reputation in his neighborhood, but when he accidentally becomes involved with a track team, he finds his talent, his sport, and his community. Coach becomes his substitute father figure, and the team becomes Ghost’s family. But what will Ghost do when it all threatens to fall apart, and the disintegration is all Ghost’s fault?

This short novel could sound like a cliched high interest/low reading level sports fable. “Troubled African American boy from a poverty-stricken neighborhood and family discovers his sports talent and learns to be a man under the tutelage of a wise and caring coach.” And the book is short, only 180 pages. And Ghost sounds like a seventh grader, a twelve year old, somewhat street-wise, but not jaded or too cynical about himself or others in spite of his family history. These are things—the simple plot, the length, and the voice of Ghost as narrator–that combine to make the book accessible.

But Ghost has a little something extra that makes it transcend the genre. Maybe it’s the minor characters, other members of Ghost’s track team, who seem as if they could jump out of the pages of this novel as full, well-rounded characters themselves. (Ghost is the first book in a planned series, so maybe the other team members will get their own book.) Or maybe Ghost is good because I really wasn’t sure how the crisis was going to be resolved in the end. Maybe I just liked that the book is realistic and believable, but also hopeful. Ghost experiences consequences for his very poor decisions over the course of the story, but those consequences don’t ultimately ruin his life. I like that a lot.

I would suggest Ghost for runners and readers and readers who run, and for anyone else who wants a feel-good sports story that will draw you in and capture your heart.