Inside Moves

Todd Walton

Narrated by Todd Walton

Book published by Dark Coast Press

“The best novel about basketball ever written." (Sherman Alexie)

Told by Roary, a wry, softhearted Vietnam vet, Inside Moves is an off-beat, exuberant and extremely emotional novel focusing on the bonds of friendship between two men brought together by physical and psychological challenges, and their dreams of creating more meaningful lives for themselves and their friends.

Roary, crippled by war, and Jerry, a phenomenal basketball player born with a bum leg, hang out at Max's bar in San Francisco, a racially mixed watering hole for the disabled community. Against seemingly impossible odds, Roary and Jerry, with lots of help from their friends, set out to realize Jerry's dream of becoming a pro basketball player.

Inside Moves is often classified as a sports novel, but basketball is merely the backdrop to this human comedy of love and sorrow and the healing power of friendship and community.

Inside Moves was Todd Walton's first novel and caused a sensation when published by Doubleday in 1978. A motion picture of Inside Moves was released in 1980, with a screenplay by Barry Levinson and Valerie Curtin and directed by Richard Donner. The movie starred John Savage and launched the acting careers of David Morse, Amy Wright, and Diana Scarwid, who received an Academy Award-nomination as Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Louise, the feisty waitress of Max's.

Long unavailable, the movie version of Inside Moves was born again in 2009 with the long-awaited release of the DVD by Lions Gate Entertainment - which has spurred a renewed interest in the novel that inspired the film.

Todd Walton is the author of Louie and Women, Inside Moves, Forgotten Impulses, Ruby and Spear, Buddha in a Teacup, and other works of fiction. His books have been published by Doubleday, Simon & Schuster, Dutton, Bantam, and others. The film adaptation of Inside Moves won an Oscar nomination for its co-star and continues to attract fans. University Press Audiobooks publishes several titles by Todd Walton, including Inside Moves, Louie & Women, and Ruby and Spear.

REVIEWS:

“An extraordinary first novel. There is a real story here, metaphorical in its intensity and cleanly, effortlessly told. The pace is magic.”

—Anne Rice

“A first-rate work, a story of hardship and dreams, rough, honest, youthful. Most of all it is a novel in which hope and the realizing of one's potential is the dominant theme.”

—San Francisco Chronicle

“Timely and daring...Mr. Walton is most perceptive.”

—The New Yorker

“The best novel about basketball ever written...ranks with the very best sports novels ever written. To give the most basic comparison, Inside Moves is the Bull Durham of basketball, except with war injuries, amputees, prostitutes, radical surgery, and the lonesome, lonesome wails of hungry souls.”

—Sherman Alexie, award-winning author of Reservation Blues, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, and other works of fiction and poetry.