Inside a town deep in the Florida Everglades, where senior high school football may be the only escape, a haunted quarterback, a returning hero, and a scholar struggle against terrible odds.

The loamy black “muck” that surrounds Belle Glade, Florida once built an empire for Big Sugar and provided a lot of the nation’s vegetables, often over the backs of roving, destitute migrants. Many of these were kids who honed their skills along the field rows and began perhaps one of the most legendary football programs in about Muck Town: Being successful and Shedding in Football’s Overlooked Town America. Belle Glade’s senior high school group, the Glades Central Raiders, has sent a fantastic number of players towards the Country wide Football Group – 27 since 1985, with five of those drafted in the first round.

The industry that gave rise to the town and its team also spawned the chronic poverty, teeming migrant ghettos, and violence that cripples futures before they can ever begin. Muck City tells the story of quarterback Mario Rowley, whose desire is to earn a championship for his deceased parents and peaceful the ghosts that haunt him; mind coach Jessie Hester, the town’s first NFL celebrity, who returns house to “earn kids, not really championships”; and Jonteria Willliams, who must build her dream of becoming a doctor in one of the poorest high schools in the nation. For boys like Mario, being truly a Raider is normally a one-shot windows for escape and a university education. Without football, Jonteria and the others must make it on brains and fortitude alone. For the trainer, good intentions must fight a town’s obsession to earn above all else.

Beyond the Fri night lamps, this book is an engrossing family portrait of a community mired in a shameful past and uncertain future, but with the fierce will to survive, win, and get away to a better life.