The Eleventh Man

Ivan Doig

Oct 2008 · Recorded Books · Narrated by Tom Stechschulte

About this audiobook

Driven by the memory of a fallen teammate, TSU's 1941 starting lineup made Montana football history, charging through the season undefeated. Two years later, the "Supreme Team" is caught up in World War II. Ten of them are scattered around the globe in the war's various lonely and dangerous theaters. The eleventh man, Ben Reinking, has been plucked from pilot training by a military propaganda machine hungry for heroes. Man by man, he is to chronicle the adventures of his teammates for small-town newspapers across the country, like the one his father edits. Ready for action, he chafes at the assignment, little dreaming that it will bring him love from an unexpected quarter and put to the test the law of averages, which holds that all but one of his teammates should come through the conflict unscathed. A deeply American story, The Eleventh Man is Ivan Doig's most powerful novel to date.

About the author

Ivan Doig was born in White Sulphur Springs, Montana in 1939. He received bachelor's and master's degrees in journalism from Northwestern University and a Ph.D. in history from University of Washington. Before becoming an author, he worked as a ranch hand and a journalist. His non-fiction works include This House of Sky, Winter Brothers, and Heart Earth. His fiction titles include English Creek, Dancing at the Rascal Fair, Bucking the Sun, The Whistling Season, The Bartender's Tale, and Last Bus to Wisdom. He received several awards including the Western Literature Association's Lifetime Distinguished Achievement Award and the Wallace Stegner Award in 2007. He died of multiple myeloma on April 8, 2015 at the age of 75.