"The Sacred Acre" Review

Last year I read the book titled, “The Sacred Acre”. This book remains as my favorite book of all time. The book is a story of Ed Thomas’ life. Most of his life is spent on the football field coaching the Aplington-Parkersburg Football team. Aside from that, the book explains just how Coach Thomas became a hero and a legend in Parkersburg.  From rebuilding the city of Parkersburg after and EF5 tornado ripped through, to painting a picture of how Coach reached out to everyone in the community, the book goes in depth on all of those topics. The book also ends in tragedy and explains how the community had to rebuild from yet another devastating loss.

This book was by far the best book I have read in the past year. I liked it so much because of multiple reasons. One being because it relates sports into each chapter, therefore it is easier for me to relate. However another thing I found shocking about this book is how much it incorporates God and The Bible. I am very deeply rooted in my faith so to read about “God Moments” that happened throughout the book was really uplifting. Towards the end of the book, a lot of Bible verses are stated and Coach Thomas’ son gives a very impactful speech evolving around God’s word.

           One thing I wasn’t too fond of throughout the book was some of the repetitiveness. Sometimes I would see the same information appear multiple times only in different ways. It got somewhat irritating reading the same thing over and over but I guess it helped me retain the information. Another thing I found was that some of the views of people mentioned throughout the book were, at times, contradicting. After some thinking, I was able to find away to link both of the People’s views together.  All in all however, it was a fantastic book and would recommend it to anyone.

 The reason I was prompted to write about “The Sacred Acre” is due to the amount of violence we see in the schools, and surrounding community.. No one was expecting any such thing to happen in small town Parkersburg but it did. This murder devastated many, and over 5000 people attended the Visitation. It talks about the timeline of the murderer, and how he should have still been in the hospital, or if not the hospital, he should have been in jail. This just goes to show how important communication is. The police were thinking the hospital would notify them once Mr. Mark Becker was released from the Psych ward, but the hospital did no such thing. Instead he Becker was released, and killed the man who ultimately got Parkersburg on the Map. (WC 458)