Gravity, Hardcover

A. S. King meets Chris Crutcher in boxing journalist Sarah Deming's YA novel about a young female boxer who learns to fight for what she wants.

When Gravity Delgado walks into Cops 'n Kids, a no-frills Brooklyn boxing gym, and starts working with the legendary Coach Thomas, she joins a true melting pot of fighters. There's the flirtatious Lefty (a southpaw), hard-to-beat D-Minus ("They call me D-Minus 'cause I'm all you need"), artistic Kimani "Monster" Browne, and a host of others. At the gym, Gravity finds the unexpected: the father she's never had in her coach, not one but two romantic prospects, and, most importantly, a love and skill for boxing. If she can stay focused, despite her troubled home life, she might just have a shot at the Olympics.

With each blow, each jab, and each punch, Sarah Deming draws her readers into the gritty and inspiring world of Gravity Delgado, a Jewish Dominican teenager growing up in Brooklyn and aspiring for greatness.

Sarah Deming assisted on the New York Times bestselling sports memoir Eat & Run and wrote for CNBC's 2012 Olympics coverage. She is an HBO Boxing insider, as well as a senior boxing correspondent for Stiff Jab. Her essays have appeared in the Threepenny Review, the Guardian, Penthouse Forum, the Washington Post, HuffPost, WNYC.com, and the Morning News, and have been noted in Best American Essays and Best American Sportswriting. She's been awarded a Pushcart Prize and a MacDowell Fellowship. Before becoming a writer, Sarah was a chef, a yoga teacher, and a Golden Gloves boxing champion. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, Ethan Iverson, and works with young boxers at Atlas Cops and Kids. Learn more about Sarah at sarahdeming.typepad.com or on Twitter at @sarahdeming.