A Launch Event featuring David Neil Drews

517 Union Avenue,Knoxville TN 37902

11 June, 2023

Description

Author and Knoxville local David Neil Drews will be joining the Union Ave Books team to celebrate the launch of his debut, IRON TIGERS. This event will be taking place on June 11, 2023 at 2 pm. While this event is free, we ask that you reserve your spot. About the Author: A Gallup Poll reports that 56% of Americans identify themselves as college football fans. David Neil Drews instantly became one of their number when he attended his first collegiate football game. He was seven, the same year he started playing organized football. IRON TIGERS is a product of Drews' passion for sports, American history, and fiction. He has an English literature degree from the University of Tennessee and has taught high school and community college English. While pursuing his English degree, he co-published an academic article on Walt Whitman and race. From 2016 until 2019, he served as the publicist for the Knoxville Writers’ Guild. About the Book: During an era of bone-crushing football, a small college team seeks gridiron immortality. It is November 1899 and the Sewanee Tigers depart from their remote mountaintop campus in Tennessee. Traveling by rail to Texas and back, the undersized Tigers battle five formidable foes in six days. The teamʼs audacious manager, Alfie Melville, is devoted to his school and the South. He purposely created a quixotic schedule for the Tigers and fully expects his men to sweep their opponents. If they do, the Tigers will become instant collegiate football legends, shine glory on their beloved Sewanee, and announce the arrival of Southern football. Battered and exhausted, the young men from Tennessee fight prodigious teams on distant gridirons while embroiled in struggles with each other off the field. Deceit, betrayal, and bitter conflicts over money, race, and sex threaten to derail their daring and bold endeavor. To return to Sewanee as heroic, victorious warriors, these teammates must trust and sacrifice for each other. Iron Tigers is inspired by the actual 1899 Sewanee Tigers football squad, which the NCAA News called a team “unequaled for endurance” and the New York Times declared “the greatest college team ever.”