Wheat Fields . . . an alluring story of unexpected love and clashing cultures set in America’s rural heartland, Lawrence, Kansas, home of Kansas University and its celebrated NCAA Champion Jayhawk basketball team.
Kansas University recruits dozens of basketball players each year. But none had to move to Lawrence from the wheat fields of Central Kansas for his senior year of high school. And, once a Jayhawk freshman, none was ever swept off his feet by a young woman wearing a bright yellow head scarf.
Wheat Fields follows Richie Armstrong as he moves from Salina and adjusts to Free State High School. Soon after arriving, he meets and impresses Sean Grogan, the Lawrence Journal World’ s sports editor. Richie’s play and Grogan’s columns attract the attention of Gene Bennett, the Jayhawk head coach, whose in-home visit with Richie and his mother displays the dynamics of blue-blood recruiting—the planning and the impact of the pitch as well as the anxiety that shadows even a hall-of-fame coach.
Grogan chronicles Richie’s freshman year at Kansas. But there is more going on at KU than basketball. The academic community is rocked by accusations of racism leveled against Jacob Matthews, a rock-star philosophy professor. Over the holidays, Richie meets Farieh Bukhari, a brilliant freshman student from Tehran whose smile and head scarf will command the moments he does not give to basketball. And it is Farieh’s riveting testimony that highlights Jacob Mathews’ defense in his academic trial.
An informed, often-humorous introduction to major-college basketball, Wheat Fields introduces college life, as well: the campus, the traditions, the students, and the many facets of the faculty—their generosity, their jealousies, and their sustaining regard for their students.
“Ardent fans of KU’s basketball prowess will love Bill Sampson’s new novel. But Wheat Fields is more than a compelling sports story. Sampson’s novel also explores such perennial on-campus topics as student romance and academic jealousy, including a colleague’s desire for revenge against one of the university’s most popular professors. Moreover, the author is a wonderful writer and a terrific storyteller. Do put Wheat Fields on your required reading list.”
— Bill Tuttle is Professor Emeritus of American Studies at the University of Kansas and the author of several books, notably including “Daddy’s Gone to War”: The Second World War in the Lives of America’s Children and Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919
“Wheat Fields is a wonderful book filled with engaging characters brought to life by witty, literate, but accessible and engaging prose. And while there are so many reasons to love this book, as a lawyer, I was simply blown away by Bill’s description of the academic proceeding where a charismatic and talented professor is forced to defend himself against charges of misconduct.”
— Walt Cofer, formerly with Shook, Hardy & Bacon and one of the nation's premier trial lawyers
