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Bring One Home: A Memoir of Boyhood, Basketball, and Hometown Spirit
In the 1960s, the biggest dream for many young boys across the Upper Peninsula of Michigan was to play for their high school basketball team. In the small town of Bessemer, this meant one wearing the blue and gold of the Speedboys. The two obstacles standing in every young Bessemer boy's way were bitter winters of endless snow and a padlock on the doors to the only good gym in town. One day, when a young inexperienced coach is hired to lead the team, the Speedboys' usual aspirations of winning championships suddenly become far they merely want to win a single game. Mired in an epic losing streak, the team's declining fortunes come to mirror those of the town itself. Iron ore mines are shuttered. Jobs are lost. And the Speedboys' losses start piling up. What transpires is nothing less than a test of the town's soul and the character of its people. Bring One Home is an irresistible trip back to the days when kids played basketball on snow-covered driveways, drank chocolate malts at the Tip Top Cafe, and folks got their news in the local barbershop. Told from the viewpoint of a young, anxious boy striving to fulfill the expectations set forth by the adults in his life, this is an underdog story as heartwarming as it is at times heartbreaking. Filled with historical insights and laugh-out-loud moments, Bring One Home is a tribute to the author's beloved hometown and their undeniable determination to win.
334 pages, Paperback
Published October 31, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
October 31, 2025
Bring One Home is about far more than a basketball team on a losing streak — it’s a story of resilience, heart, and the unbreakable spirit of community. Thomas Pelissero paints a vivid portrait of a small mining town in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula that has weathered its share of triumphs and trials. Once a booming community filled with prosperity, pride, and championship teams, the town faces decline, hardship, and uncertainty, yet never loses its sense of togetherness.
Through rich, nostalgic storytelling, Pelissero invites readers into the homes and hearts of the people who lived through those transformative times. From family dinners and snowy walks home from school to local hair salons run out of living rooms, every detail captures the heartbeat of small-town America.
The author’s ability to make readers feel as though they know these characters, as if they grew up alongside them, is a true testament to his craft. Young kids idolize their hometown basketball players, seeing in them symbols of hope and possibility amid the challenges of their era. Against a backdrop of national upheaval like war, loss, and change, Bring One Home reminds us what it means to hold on to community, pride, and perseverance.
This book is a beautiful tribute to a team that refused to quit and a town that never stopped believing in its youth and its future.
Through rich, nostalgic storytelling, Pelissero invites readers into the homes and hearts of the people who lived through those transformative times. From family dinners and snowy walks home from school to local hair salons run out of living rooms, every detail captures the heartbeat of small-town America.
The author’s ability to make readers feel as though they know these characters, as if they grew up alongside them, is a true testament to his craft. Young kids idolize their hometown basketball players, seeing in them symbols of hope and possibility amid the challenges of their era. Against a backdrop of national upheaval like war, loss, and change, Bring One Home reminds us what it means to hold on to community, pride, and perseverance.
This book is a beautiful tribute to a team that refused to quit and a town that never stopped believing in its youth and its future.
November 14, 2025
Thoroughly enjoyed reading this memoir! A great look back at life in the 60s in small town America. Heartwarming and wonderfully researched, I felt like I was right there with the team and with the author.
February 1, 2026
Bring One Home" is storytelling at its finest-a heartfelt journey into rural Upper Michigan during the 1960's. Thomas Pelissero masterfully paints a vivid picture of small-town life at a turning point, where economic uncertainty looms and world events ripple through the lives of both kids and adults. At the heart of it all is a basketball team chasing a single, elusive victory-a quest that becomes a powerful metaphor for resilience, hope, and community spirit. From the first page, this book pulls you in with its authentic characters, rich setting, and themes that resonate far beyond the court. If you love stories about perseverance and the ties that bind us together, "Bring One Home" is a must-read!
November 14, 2025
In Bring One Home: A Memoir of Boyhood, Basketball, and Hometown Spirit, his touching memoir about growing up in the small Michigan Mining town of Bessemer in the Upper Peninsula, Thomas L. Pelissero explores the city’s past and recalls his childhood, with his love of and support for Bessemer High School’s woeful basketball team taking front and center in the story. The book’s prologue takes us back to 1947, recalling a time when the team last won a championship and the whole city turned out, filling the gymnasium for a celebration. Beforehand, their coach, Helge Pukema, had reminded them, “What you accomplished last night has never been done before in our high school.” He reminds them that it was the first basketball championship the school had ever won.
It would be quite some time before the team got back to its glory days. Pelissero tells a long and intricate story of how several years of losing and heartache would haunt the boys of the Bessemer Speedboys, but never damper the town’s enthusiastic support for their forlorn team, and it’s especially forlorn coach at the beginning of the 1963-1964 school year, which the author refers to as the “First Quarter,” the book being broken into four sections like the quarters of a basketball game. And I have to say, it was one long game for the boys. Some of the team’s stronger players managed to endure through all the hardship, including two straight winless seasons. But halfway through the story, after a series of crippling losses, one of their most important members, Bruce Richardson, tells his coach that he won’t be coming back because, according to him, Coach Bonk “listens too much to what others think.”
Poor Coach Bonk really can’t catch a break, and he can’t manage to get anywhere. He listens to advice from other coaches and gets community members to help teach fundamentals in a youth intramural basketball league to develop younger talent. Nevertheless, he still cannot manage to churn out a win. Even some of the people in the stands turn against him, and during a particularly bad streak, one screams out, “Hey, coach, aren’t you supposed to shoot the ball in basketball? … That’s how you win the game.”
Bring One Home also serves as a snapshot of the 1960s. We’re reminded of Vietnam and of growing up with a Cold War threat as unnerving as it was ubiquitous. The author does a great job at showing the dignity of everyday, working-class people who find meaning in community and friendship. In one of the more poignant passages, Pelissero’s father, a diabetic, is rushed to the hospital. When he handles the situation with calm, remarking that he is ready to meet his maker, we are reminded of the dignity and simple goodness of small-town America and what it instills in us.
I don’t want to give away the ending, but a win does come, and Coach Bonk, who felt it necessary to retire after two losing seasons, finds redemption some years later when he learns that Bessemer had developed into one of the very best high school teams in the area. He needed that, and he would have loved Bring One Home by Thomas L. Pelissero, as will anyone who has grown up playing hoops in small-town America.
It would be quite some time before the team got back to its glory days. Pelissero tells a long and intricate story of how several years of losing and heartache would haunt the boys of the Bessemer Speedboys, but never damper the town’s enthusiastic support for their forlorn team, and it’s especially forlorn coach at the beginning of the 1963-1964 school year, which the author refers to as the “First Quarter,” the book being broken into four sections like the quarters of a basketball game. And I have to say, it was one long game for the boys. Some of the team’s stronger players managed to endure through all the hardship, including two straight winless seasons. But halfway through the story, after a series of crippling losses, one of their most important members, Bruce Richardson, tells his coach that he won’t be coming back because, according to him, Coach Bonk “listens too much to what others think.”
Poor Coach Bonk really can’t catch a break, and he can’t manage to get anywhere. He listens to advice from other coaches and gets community members to help teach fundamentals in a youth intramural basketball league to develop younger talent. Nevertheless, he still cannot manage to churn out a win. Even some of the people in the stands turn against him, and during a particularly bad streak, one screams out, “Hey, coach, aren’t you supposed to shoot the ball in basketball? … That’s how you win the game.”
Bring One Home also serves as a snapshot of the 1960s. We’re reminded of Vietnam and of growing up with a Cold War threat as unnerving as it was ubiquitous. The author does a great job at showing the dignity of everyday, working-class people who find meaning in community and friendship. In one of the more poignant passages, Pelissero’s father, a diabetic, is rushed to the hospital. When he handles the situation with calm, remarking that he is ready to meet his maker, we are reminded of the dignity and simple goodness of small-town America and what it instills in us.
I don’t want to give away the ending, but a win does come, and Coach Bonk, who felt it necessary to retire after two losing seasons, finds redemption some years later when he learns that Bessemer had developed into one of the very best high school teams in the area. He needed that, and he would have loved Bring One Home by Thomas L. Pelissero, as will anyone who has grown up playing hoops in small-town America.
November 12, 2025
Thomas L. Pelissero delivers a bittersweet memoir of his small-town dreams from Bessemer, home of the Speedboys basketball team on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in Bring One Home: A Memoir of Boyhood, Basketball and Hometown Spirit.
Helge Pukema was a first-year head coach for the Bessemer Speedboys, and this is where the story begins in 1947. Pukema had a thick Finnish accent and when he spoke (barked, actually), the team listened. He was proud to tell his boys they were the first basketball championship for Bessemer High School, delivering them the notoriety and title of the Upper Peninsula Class B High School Basketball Champions. Pukema was no stranger to winning. He was a star athlete at Duluth Central High School where he excelled in both football and track and field. He went on to be a force at the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers in the 1940s, playing alongside Heisman Trophy winner Bruce Smith. Football was Pukema's sweet spot, but his mission was to deliver an equally noted rivalry on the basketball courts.
Mr. Pelissero lays the groundwork for his experience beyond the forward where his story begins with the First Quarter of the 1963-1964 season. There is a nostalgic quality that carries the reader from the onset of this memoir in that one finds him/herself relating to the moments of victory as much as the agony of defeat. There is melancholy toward a time from yesteryear when America had a wholesome quality. This is a story rife with tender and endearing salve that is the medicine at the heart of many American small towns. There is a determination that tugs at readers' souls to remember how it was.
This is Mr. Pelissero’s debut body of work. I applaud him for his connection with his writing and more importantly, knowing the audience he set out to engage in the telling of his story. There are moments that will make one laugh aloud and in the next, shed a tear. Mr. Pelissero captures the agony of what it means to lose a basketball game that the team fought so hard to win. The sense that resonates throughout, however, is the desire to feel what people you have never met felt. We all have stories from our younger days, but not everyone can place the words across page upon page in a way to maintain their audience from cover to cover. Indeed, Mr. Pelissero’s voice is resounding from beginning to end. I say bravo and certainly look forward to his next book.
Quill says: Bring One Home is a must read for anyone who knows what it is like to be on the winning side as much as the losing end and understand the lessons learned with both experiences.
Helge Pukema was a first-year head coach for the Bessemer Speedboys, and this is where the story begins in 1947. Pukema had a thick Finnish accent and when he spoke (barked, actually), the team listened. He was proud to tell his boys they were the first basketball championship for Bessemer High School, delivering them the notoriety and title of the Upper Peninsula Class B High School Basketball Champions. Pukema was no stranger to winning. He was a star athlete at Duluth Central High School where he excelled in both football and track and field. He went on to be a force at the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers in the 1940s, playing alongside Heisman Trophy winner Bruce Smith. Football was Pukema's sweet spot, but his mission was to deliver an equally noted rivalry on the basketball courts.
Mr. Pelissero lays the groundwork for his experience beyond the forward where his story begins with the First Quarter of the 1963-1964 season. There is a nostalgic quality that carries the reader from the onset of this memoir in that one finds him/herself relating to the moments of victory as much as the agony of defeat. There is melancholy toward a time from yesteryear when America had a wholesome quality. This is a story rife with tender and endearing salve that is the medicine at the heart of many American small towns. There is a determination that tugs at readers' souls to remember how it was.
This is Mr. Pelissero’s debut body of work. I applaud him for his connection with his writing and more importantly, knowing the audience he set out to engage in the telling of his story. There are moments that will make one laugh aloud and in the next, shed a tear. Mr. Pelissero captures the agony of what it means to lose a basketball game that the team fought so hard to win. The sense that resonates throughout, however, is the desire to feel what people you have never met felt. We all have stories from our younger days, but not everyone can place the words across page upon page in a way to maintain their audience from cover to cover. Indeed, Mr. Pelissero’s voice is resounding from beginning to end. I say bravo and certainly look forward to his next book.
Quill says: Bring One Home is a must read for anyone who knows what it is like to be on the winning side as much as the losing end and understand the lessons learned with both experiences.
January 10, 2026
I recently had the pleasure of reading Thomas L. Pelissero's memoir "Bring One Home." In many ways, it's like hopping into a time machine, rich in details as it is, and while he tells of growing up in the 1960s in Bessemer, Michigan, I grew up in nearby White Pine, Michigan in the 1970s. Our schools were, in fact, rivals. Pelissero regales us with the story of the Bessemer Speedboys painfully prolonged high school basketball losing streak. I don't think it is a plot spoil to say that the story's climax is when the losses finally come to a merciful end. It's the town and the people, however - the community as it were - that truly shine in this book, his affection for his hometown palpable. I could list the details he uncovered that fired up my nostalgia oven but that's like listening to the thank you laundry list of an Oscar winner. Safe to say, the book is a rich vein of smalltown gems brought to life by what seems to be the writer's steel trap memory. One could well say that this is a story ABOUT a community - swimming upstream against mass layoffs brought on by a mine closure - poured through the filter of a gutsy underdog trying to free itself of the increasingly embarrassing loser label by finally notching one in the win column. If you long for a warm slice of smalltown yesteryear, do yourself a favor and buy this book. And you know I'm sincere... because we White Pine Warriors hated the Speedboys.
January 16, 2026
I am a personal friend of the author's wife and I used to live in the UP of Michigan in Ironwood. I felt like I had returned home because so many of the businesses, streets, weather, etc were familiar. The amount of research Tom put into this book is unbelievable. I cannot recommend it enough even if you have never lived in the Upper Peninsula.
I started reading it in the waiting room of my Ophthamologist and had to put it away because I was tearing up in the Prologue. I also found myself laughing out loud during parts of the book. It is a wonderful read, but I don't recommend it as the book you take to the doctor's office or other places where you have to be quiet. LOL
I started reading it in the waiting room of my Ophthamologist and had to put it away because I was tearing up in the Prologue. I also found myself laughing out loud during parts of the book. It is a wonderful read, but I don't recommend it as the book you take to the doctor's office or other places where you have to be quiet. LOL
November 14, 2025
Bring One Home is an immersive and heartwarming book. The reader is transported to life in the 1960’s in a small town in the U.P. of Michigan, where mines are closing, economic instability is looming, and the high school basketball team is on a major losing streak. In the midst of hard times, there are still slivers of hope and a community that continues to support one another. Come for the basketball, stay for the funny and touching stories. The author’s detailed writing will have you rooting for the team and community like you are right there with them. I highly recommend this memoir!
November 27, 2025
Bring One Home is a nostalgic and deeply moving memoir that captures the heart of small-town America through the eyes of a boy chasing a dream. Pelissero masterfully blends humor, hardship, and hometown pride into a story that feels both timeless and intimate. It’s an inspiring underdog tale that celebrates resilience, community, and the spirit that keeps people fighting even when the odds are stacked against them.
February 12, 2026
The best book I’ve ever read. It brought me laughter, tears and a beautiful mixture of suspense and humor. Well done.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews