When in elementary school a P.E. teacher showed Biggie Bluestone a single leg takedown, it was love at first sight. From that moment, Biggie has gradually morphed into the running, lifting, perpetually training fiend that he is today at seventeen, a contender for the 1971 Illinois High School Wrestling Championship. He has an alter-ego – Killer Kowalski, a fifties-era professional wrestler with a penchant for throat stomping, though off the mat, reputedly, a genuinely nice guy. No one knows about Killer Kowalski – not Biggie’s parents – educators who cannot fathom wherefrom this obsessive son of theirs has spawned – not Biggie’s teachers, who see only a musing, if muscular, kid who when called upon expresses a high degree of abstract thinking – not Biggie’s best friends, Wing and Luigi, whom Biggie pins every day at practice before donning his rubber suit and running laps around the track so that he can work up a real sweat.

Biggie wants only to keep the world at arm’s length so that he can concentrate on his goal. He has taped a photo from the newspapers of his nemesis, Rick Berkenmeier, to the refrigerator door. Berky won the state championship last year as a junior and is the one obstacle between himself and this year’s championship. Berky has had all the advantages – older brothers who were themselves state champions, and who do nothing all day, Biggie imagines, but drill Berky on cradles and crossface half nelsons – a mother who never minds that Berky starves himself to make weight before every match – a coach who was actually a champion wrestler himself, unlike Biggie’s coach, Wetzel, whose back acts up if Biggie even looks at him. For instruction, Biggie relies on a pictorial manual of wrestling holds.

But the world intrudes. Biggie’s younger sister, Giselle, is involved in an accident that results in the death of her best friend, and the kids at school have ostracized her. He must find a way to lend her some of the cachet he has garnered as a star athlete. One night, during his six-mile run on icy streets after dinner, a car slides through a stop sign and hits Biggie. Biggie’s shoulder is injured, but Biggie is unstoppable. He does take a moment to yell at the girl behind the wheel, but when he sees her sobbing through the car window, of course, he has a change of heart and checks to make sure she is okay, admonishes her to be more careful, and runs on. The girl, Gloria Serpentino, becomes yet another distraction for Biggie, though a welcome one, it turns out.

The massiveness of Biggie’s consciousness, accumulated throughout the novel, measures up to the drama of the state tournament, where internal and external forces collide. The result is a novel rich in themes of loss, love, friendship, and dedication—but above all, honor.

Praise for Killer Kowalski Takes the Mat: 

"Don Eron’s novel Killer Kowalski Takes the Mat is an entertaining coming-of-age tale set in 1970s suburban Chicago.

The story centers on Dan “Biggie” Bluestone, a 17-year-old wrestler living in Highland Park. Biggie is co-captain of his high school wrestling team. Last year, he was beaten before he could reach the state competition, so now he aims to not only reach the state wrestling finals but to also secure a scholarship to nearby Northwestern University, where his father is a hot-shot sociology professor.

Biggie lives a decent life with his parents and sister Giselle, and his privilege allows him to singularly focus on his wrestling goals. To reach them, he envisions himself as the legendary professional wrestler Killer Kowalski. “With a hint of menace,” writes Eron of Biggie, “coolly, icily, Killer Kowalski took the mat.”

On a nightly training run, Biggie is hit by a car driven by Gloria “Glory” Serpentino, a troubled yet intriguing, beautiful classmate. Biggie is badly bruised but not seriously injured, and after she calls to apologize, they become confidants on the phone. This accident foreshadows a far more serious car accident that changes Biggie’s and his sister’s lives and propels the plot forward.

Eron is an adept storyteller who delves deeply into the lives of high school wrestlers with details of their starvation diets before weigh-ins, interesting play-by-plays of their matches and more. The author also successfully evinces Chicago and its suburbs. Dialogue is spot-on, and although the book addresses some serious subjects, Eron deftly includes wry humor, as when Biggie eyes a platter of food at a restaurant: “...he promised himself he wouldn’t go overboard gorging. An eagle could as well promise not to soar.”

This is a highly engaging read with a likeable character at its heart. Killer Kowalski will delight wrestlers, of course. But even non-wrestling fans will eagerly turn the pages to find out how Biggie and his teammates fare as this original plot unfolds."

--BlueInk Review (starred)

"As charming as it is wise, this big-hearted, richly textured novel of growing up, falling in love, and discovering one's path and self at the dawn of the 1970s centers on Illinois high-school wrestler Dan "Biggie" Bluestone as he strives to make it through his senior year undefeated and unscored-on-and to get recruited-with a scholarship-by a major school.... 

Despite much striking detail about wrestling and the athlete's life, and a structure that builds to a season-ending tournament, the novel's heart is in Dan's discovering life beyond the mat-and that he has more to offer the world than being able to bench 360. Guiding him through that journey is Gloria, a character as memorable as Dan himself, a young woman who grows close to him in a series of surprising, off-kilter phone conversations, probing Dan with the incisiveness of an analyst and the hot-and-cold wit of a wounded, world-class flirt. Their slow courtship thrills and moves, a dance between guarded souls, wary yet drawn to their obvious connection."

BookLife, Editor's Pick