Larry O'Connor's The Penalty Box, written in vivid and immediate prose, is an admirably structured first novel whose father/son theme resonates like Chekhov. I enjoyed it tremendously.

-- Howard Norman (author of The Bird Artist and Devotion)

Kyle Callendar, like hundreds of thousands of working-class Canadian boys, sees hockey as his one shot at glory. But that elusive glory is not always what it seems.

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Both a gripping father-son narrative and a harsh and searching look at Canada’s national obsession, The Penalty Box tells the story of Kyle, an ex-pro hockey player and official escort to the Stanley Cup. Kyle’s father, a World War II veteran, is a remote man who overvalues the manliness of hockey and sees Kyle’s talent for the game as his life’s work. But in his father’s eyes, Kyle can never measure up - never skate fast enough, hit hard enough, bring home girls beautiful enough. As he grows in his skill and his own love for the game, Kyle discovers he’s unable to find an identity outside of hockey, even when the game is responsible for a painful secret that he can’t bring himself to accept. It is the unravelling of that secret - one that is shared by many hockey players in this taciturn man’s world - that drives Kyle to a breaking point and finally forces him to re-evaluate himself, his relationships, and his complex feelings for the sport that consumes him.

Larry O’Connor is currently an editor with the New York Post. His first book, Tip of the Iceberg (University of Georgia Press/Canadian Scholars’ Press Inc.), was the only memoir short-listed for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing in 2003.