Bad Boy

Hockey is the only game worth playing in the rough-and-tumble prairie town of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. When sixteen-year-old A.J. Brandiosa makes the Triple A team of his dreams, he can hardly believe that his life is finally coming together. And then it falls apart. A.J. makes an unexpected discovery about his best friend and teammate, Tulsa Brown, and he can't keep his rage and fear from spilling onto the ice. An aggressive defenseman is becoming a violent one. . . An explosive novel by award-winning author Diana Wieler that looks honestly at teenage sexuality and the world of amateur hockey.

A.J. Brandiosa becomes the bad boy of the Cyclone hockey team, and learns that his best friend is gay, as he tries to cope with his own sexuality during his senior year in high school.

Publishers Weekly

Full of action and dramatic tension, this story set in Canada reveals the problems of a high school hockey player during his first year on a Triple A team. A. J. Brandiosa's elation in making the Cyclones is undercut by the fear he will not measure up to the other players. The 17-year-old's hot temper and aggressiveness in the game soon bring him the wrong kind of notoriety. Trying to dispel his reputation for being a ``bad boy'' on the ice is not the only challenge A. J. faces. Even more difficult is his struggle to accept that his best friend and teammate, Tully Brown, is gay. After A. J.'s initial shock over this news wears off, the boy begins to question his own sexuality. Besides relating the dynamics of amateur hockey, Wieler ( Last Chance Summer ) explores the psychology of a confused adolescent trying to prove his manhood. The topics of homosexuality and peer pressures are dealt with openly yet with delicacy; messages regarding tolerance and self-control are effectively conveyed. Ages 13-up. (Mar.)

THE music was blaring, a solid wall of sound that pressed A.J. Brandiosa against the wall.