Summary of Growing Season

Growing Season continues the story of Cassie Garnet started in No Ordinary Season, James V. Jacobs’ first novel, in which Cassie won the Indiana High School Cross Country Championship, proving she’s not mediocre, a word she despises. She is told “the phone will be ringing off the hook” as NCAA Division I universities offer her scholarships to run. But the only D-I school to show interest is Northern Indiana University. C.R. Simon, Cassie’s high school coach and mentor, persuades Coach Mary Tryton of NIU to give Cassie a scholarship—with Tryton’s condition that Cassie runs a fast time in track competition. That’s a huge problem—River Bend High School has no girls’ track program. Coach Simon forces RBHS to provide girls’ track. Yet, even with Simon’s help, everything is going against Cassie in track, and Tryton wants to renege on her offer to Cassie. Plus, Cassie’s relationship with star basketball player Jake Nader, the guy Cassie thinks she loves, is hitting potholes. Growing Season, compels the reader to journey with Cassie Garnet through the rest of her senior year in high school into her first semester of college where Cassie faces the challenges of harsh coaching, a vindictive teammate, the threat of academic failure, lost love, depression, and the specter cast by a sexual predator from River Bend. But she also makes new friends who stand by her, including an old rival—and with the guidance of a brilliant therapist described by Cassie “as so black he’s blue,” she answers the essential question: If you don’t advocate for yourself, who will? Growing Season is about values and change. Its themes provide life lessons for both young adults and older readers. As with No Ordinary Season, the human lessons in Growing Season will stay in your mind and heart long after you finish its climactic pages.

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