The author, Casey Gerald, was born in 1987 in Ohio but primarily raised in the South Oak Cliff neighborhood of Dallas, Texas, where he had extended family. The book is his memoir and follows his journey from childhood to adulthood, ending when he is approximately 30 years old. He obtains admission to Yale as a football recruit. The transformation that Yale causes, and Gerald’s struggle within himself, forms the underlying tension in the book.

Rod Gerald is Casey Gerald’s father. Rod was a star football player in high school who was recruited to Ohio State, where he suffered severe injuries and was unable to continue a football career. He was the most valuable player in the 1975 Orange Bowl, for example. The damage of losing the promising prospect of a football career looms over Rod Gerald’s life and frames much of the book.

Rod Gerald marries Debra West in 1982, which is the year that Natashia Gerald is born. Once he moves his family back to Dallas, Rod Gerald develops a drug problem (although its origins were related to his football injuries) that seems partially responsible for his increasing disengagement from his family and repeated failures to perform basic parenting tasks.