Once a month I recommend a novel that I’ve recently read and enjoyed. This month’s combines witchcraft with a high school women’s field hockey team and is set in late-80’s Massachusetts. 

We Ride Upon Sticks by Quan Barry

Pantheon Books, March 2020
Libraries | Bookshop | Goodreads

The Danvers High School women’s hockey team is . . . not great. For the 1989 season, the seniors decide to do something about this. In a notebook with Emilio Estevez on the cover, they pledge themselves to the devil in exchange for the team making it to State. 

For those who don’t know, Danvers (formerly Salem Village) was the epicenter of the witchcraft hysteria in 1692. This, of course, means that their pledge works. It probably doesn’t hurt that one of the co-captains is descended from the family of Ann Putnam, one of the primary accusers during the hysteria and trials. 

We ran off the field like a bunch of frenzied maenads carrying aloft the head of some poor slob that we’d recently torn off his shoulders.

Anyway, this is when the fun really starts. Having vowed to follow their dark urges, they begin playing pranks on their teachers. Each is recorded in the notebook, and the team starts winning. It escalates from there.

The story is told in first person plural, which works beautifully. It captures the bond between them as teammates, while subtly pointing out the possibly malevolent groupthink driving them towards what they hope will be victory. The team is an entity unto itself; while it is made up of individuals (whom you do get to know), they are all acting as one.

I cannot stress enough how fun this novel is, especially if you were in middle or high school in Massachusetts in the late 80s or the 90s. In the book, one girl’s sky-high bangs become their own character (The Claw) and I immediately pictured a specific classmate’s hair.
While I don’t like how the ending was structured, that gripe is outweighed by everything else I loved about this book. If you’ve played a team sport, were a teenager in the late 80s or early 90s, or were ever a teenage girl, you’ll probably enjoy at least one aspect of this novel.