At the start of the 2016-2017 school year, Chicago Bears fan Kareem (Syrian American) aspires to be a star quarterback but underperforms at middle school tryouts and doesn’t make the team. When Austin, the quarterback and coach’s son, offers to help Kareem get on the team in spring if Kareem does Austin’s school assignments, Kareem reluctantly agrees. Austin is an unlikable bully, but Kareem feels an immediate camaraderie with new student Fadi, a Syrian. But when Austin targets Fadi with racist bullying, Kareem doesn’t speak out to support his new friend. The personal and political collide when Kareem gets into a fight with Austin and his attempt to hide it leads to his dad’s delay in booking flights for his mom and grandparents. His mom had traveled to Syria to bring her parents, including Kareem’s ailing grandfather, to the United States. They are stuck overseas when the Trump Administration’s 2017 executive order banning immigrants from seven countries with significant Muslim populations is announced. Kareem feels responsible, and deeply guilty when his grandfather dies before the ban is lifted and his mother, with his grandmother, safely returns. Football metaphors are a unifying element across this novel-in-verse that makes the impact of Islamophobia achingly personal and vivid through Kareem’s story.