I have read Caleb’s work and it’s damn good. So if you need a book to
keep you intensely captivated, this will be it. I just got my copy.

From Caleb:

“First, I would like to thank Y & R
Publishing for producing such a great-looking book.

I want to thank Juta Medina for
designing a stunning cover that captures the emotion of the story.

And I am forever indebted to those who
have taken the time to read the novel and write a review.

The reviews keep coming, and it’s an
humbling experience to realize the reviews are better written than the novel.

Thanks to you all.”

Review by Billy Ray Chitwood:

If ever a book was meant for big screen
theaters, it’s Caleb Pirtle’s, Friday Nights Don’t Last Forever. This
gifted and prolific author has a style and delivery that keeps you reading,
metaphors and all.

The reel begins beside a big water
tower, with some of the Avalon footballers climbing up that structure hundreds
of feet to paint on the holding tank the words, Alabama State Champs. The ace
quarterback is the only player who cannot make the climb. It becomes a subtle
and substantially symbolic part of the book.

In Avalon, Alabama – small town America
– eighteen year old quarterback, Casey Clinton has brought his high school team
to the State Finals. He has also brought reputedly the ‘best passing arm’ in the
country. Trailing by four points with thirteen seconds to go in the game, the
rain coming down and the field a quagmire of soggy grass and mud, all Casey has
to do is hit his soft-handed wide receiver, Lucas Calhoun, on a square-out from
the opponents ten yard line…money in the bank, everybody on the coaching staff
and on the sidelines believe.

Casey runs around in the backfield
avoiding tacklers, gets to his spot, sets his right foot to hit his wily and
superstar wide receiver who is open in the end zone. Casey’s right foot sinks
into the mud, and the ball wobbles out in the general direction of Calhoun who
is desperately trying to catch up to the wind-driven football. Lucas doesn’t
make the misdirected football…

Game Over! Humiliation and regret
begins. A new world opens up for Casey Clinton, most of it negative, suffering
the frowns of his fans and ‘friends’, feeling the contradictory emotions that
come with this ‘passage’ in his life.

Friday Nights Don’t Last Forever has
all the reader wants – moral ambivalence, love, romance, sex, murder, the
shifty and life-changing tactics of College football recruiters, offering their
gifts – cars, young hostesses who are happy to accommodate their school’s next
super stars. The characters are well drawn and portrayed, showing Mr. Pirtle’s
brilliance as a wordsmith.

Review by Patricia La Vigne:

Friday Nights Don’t Last Forever by
Caleb Pirtle III is a roller-coaster ride through Casey Clinton’s life from the
time he slips in the mud during a crucial Friday night high school football
game. That slip cost his wide receiver, Lucas Calhoun, a fumble which lost the
game to the rival team, and the State Championship.

From that moment, the author takes his
reader into the heads of each character in the story as those characters evolve
throughout the story, how their lives are affected by events and experiences.
The language might be construed as “typical” for the rough exterior layers of
older teen boys and the coaches who want to spell out the situations in terms
understood best by those boys.

In spite of losing the state
championship, Casey’s reputation as a star athlete spread beyond his small
hometown of Avalon, Alabama. Coaches from universities across the South vied
for his signature on the dotted line that would catapult him to a college
football team.

At the helm, stood Frank Hatchett—one
might call him an old “war horse” of coaches– from the University of Alabama.
Frank had the reputation of being a veteran recruiter for the University of
Alabama who wines and dines prospective players from around the country. He’s
also of the opinion he should rule over other coaches when it comes down to his
choices.

He is intent on recruiting Casey,
whose throwing arm has led his team to many victories through the years.
But what happens when Frank arranges to meet Casey and his family for a media
interview, and while walking toward the family, Frank has to ask his assistant
what the kid’s name is again? We learn a side of Frank that is more political
than genuine interest in the boy he says should play for the Crimson Tide team
of Alabama.

When Casey is confounded by the growing
number of recruiting coaches from universities throughout the South, he seeks
advice on what to do, where to go, and how to avoid the constant clatter of
telephone calls. He gets little satisfaction from his parents because he sees a
side of himself they don’t.

We get a deeper picture of the emotions
Casey goes through, especially with his friends from school. A girl he loves
who taunts and teases him; the boys who challenge his fear of heights when they
try to goad him into climbing the local water tower; the sexual turmoil he
suffers when he is rebuffed by the head cheerleader; the seduction by a
minister’s young wife, and when he is discovered on New Year’s Day in a Dallas
hotel with a murdered girl, not knowing if he committed the murder.

From the depths of despair, can Casey
rise from the ashes of his life like the proverbial Phoenix ? Is this his rite
of passage into becoming a responsible adult?

Caleb Pirtle writes the powerful story
of what can be considered a “behind the scenes” look into the life of an
eighteen year old who has it all—talent, fame, glory, a golden future—but at
what price?

Review by Roger Summers:

Casey Clinton is a magician. He knows
football. But Caleb Pirtle out-magicians the magician.

Caleb knows how football works –
especially how football works Casey Clinton. Maneuvers him, snookers him, leads
him, seduces him, confounds him, guides and misguides him.

It is always first down and ten, with
the red zone ever within attainable reach the way Caleb zip-zip-zips his story
along, captivating and then keeping the reader spiraling in his words as only
Caleb can.

A football coach once said that there is
not much to know about football except that a football is a prolate spheroid.
Anything else, the coach insisted, is pure conjecture. Not so. Football is as
complex as it seems to be simple.

Caleb knows football’s complexities, its
intricacies, and, yes, its addiction for players and fans alike and knows how
to tell the tale of them in his special, inimitable fashion that will keep
readers up late into the night – Friday or any other night – until the very
last word of this compelling novel is absorbed.

Along the way the reader comes to
understand what is amiss and what is restorative about this night of nights in
the razzle-dazzle of football.

And then the book will be closed –
slowly, slowly closed – followed by long moments of time out to reflect upon
all you have come to know and understand between the first word and the last.

Review by David L. Atkinson:

Although the subject matter was foreign
to me, the character development and complexity I found fascinating.

Caleb Pirtle has the skill to put the
character out there with the mission of drawing in the reader and does so with
great skill.

The emotions that the players on the
football team experience are tangible and never dull in this treatment of the
game and its multi-faceted nature. An excellent read.

Caleb Pirtle III began his career writing about history and travel. He
learned quickly, however, that what happens is never as important as those who
make it happen. Many of those people have made their way into his novels.

Pirtle is the author of more than 65 published books, including the new noir
suspense thrillers, “Golgotha Connection,” “Secrets of the
Dead,” “Conspiracy of Lies,” and “Night Side of Dark. His
other novels, include “Deadline,” and “Little Lies.” He has
written such award winners as “XIT: The American Cowboy,”
“Callaway Gardens: the Unending Season,” “The Grandest
Day,” “Echoes from Forgotten Streets,” and “Spirit of a
Winner.” His nonfiction works include Gamble in the Devil’s Chalk and No
Experience Required.

He earned a journalism degree from The University of Texas and became the first
student at the university to win the national William Randolph Hearst Award for
feature writing. As a reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Pirtle
received both the Texas Headliner’s and Associated Press Awards.He served as
travel editor for Southern Living Magazine, and his travel writing was given
the National Discover America Award three times. For more than two decades,
Pirtle was editorial director for a custom publishing company in Dallas.

He has written three teleplays for network television, including “Gambler
5: Playing for Keeps,” a mini-series for CBS and “The Texas
Rangers” for John Milius and TNT. Because of the success of the CBS
mini-series, Pirtle was asked to write two novels, “Jokers Are Wild”
and “Dead Man’s Hand” for Berkeley. His blogs appear regularly on http://venturegalleries.com .

 Visit his website: Venture Galleries