A basketball game can last less than two hours. A first love may last only a season. But the memories attached to them can remain for a lifetime.
That emotional truth sits at the heart of Ian Hanes’s August: We Carry What We Bury, a sweeping novel in which basketball becomes far more than a sport. For August Harper, it represents possibility, belonging and a future beyond the Kansas farm where he was raised. For Rosalind Rose, it becomes part of the world she shares with the boy she quietly loves.
In 1977, August is the star of the Lebanon Bronchos. He is talented enough to dream about a basketball scholarship at the University of Kansas and his small hometown rallies around him and his teammates. Inside the local gym, basketball gives Lebanon something increasingly rare: a reason for the whole community to believe together.
Rose is often there too.
She sits in the bleachers watching August practice and play, careful not to draw too much attention to herself. As a Black teenager developing feelings for a white boy in a small Kansas community, Rose understands that their relationship can become a subject of gossip. Yet when practices end and the other players leave, the distance between them disappears.
August joins her in the bleachers. They tease each other, talk about their futures and sometimes simply hold hands. August dreams about college basketball. Rose dreams of becoming a civil rights lawyer and changing her world for the better.
These gentle moments make what follows devastating.
The Bronchos advance toward the state championship and August becomes the young man carrying an entire town’s hopes. Rose wants to be there when the biggest game arrives. But after being deliberately delayed by Mrs. Hudson, she misses her intended bus and must take a later one.
When Rose finally reaches Hays, the arena is still half a mile away.
She runs.
Inside, August is competing for the championship. Outside, Rose is racing toward the boy she loves. Before she can reach him, she is struck by Calvin Routeforth Meyde III’s car. Rose dies while the arena lights glow in the distance.
The Bronchos win that night.
But for August, the victory is forever transformed.
When news of the accident spreads through the celebration, August searches the crowd for Rose. Her familiar place in the stands is empty. In the days that follow, college talent scouts arrive with scholarships and opportunities for the future he once wanted.
August turns them away.
This is where basketball takes on a deeper meaning in August. The game becomes connected to everything August gained and lost: youth, ambition, community, first love and the moment that divided his life into before and after.
Years later, basketball continues through the next generation. August teaches his son John the game, restoring an old hoop and watching the boy develop the same natural ability that once defined his own youth. The sport becomes a thread connecting Rose, August, John and the community itself a way of belonging, remembering and carrying hope through difficult seasons.
Ian Hanes’s August: We Carry What We Bury may contain basketball, but it is ultimately about what remains after the final buzzer.
Because some games end.
Some loves do not.
Discover August: We Carry What We Bury by Ian Hanes, available now on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H3M2GCJJ/
