There was a thought that kept running through author, Narberth native, and former White House stenographer Beck Dorey-Stein’s mind as her latest book faced obstacle after obstacle.

“It’s just not going to happen.”

But like the 2017 Eagles team and its quarterback Nick Foles, who served as a source of inspiration for Dorey-Stein and one of her characters, she persevered, challenging reluctance she faced about the book’s strong focus on female soccer players while also juggling the demands of a newborn and parenthood.

Spectacular Things, released July 1, tells the story of three women: single mom Liz Lowe and her two daughters, Mia and Cricket. It follows the sisters through life-altering struggles, like Mia — who is named for one of Liz’s idols, soccer star Mia Hamm — who takes on a greater caregiving role growing up to support her sister’s soccer aspirations. Years later, she is diagnosed with chronic kidney disease after giving birth to her first child on the same day that Cricket is in the final soccer match of the Olympics. Cricket, named for Hamm’s teammate, Kristine Lilly, must then decide what she can give up for her sister in return.

The book, the July pick for Reese Witherspoon’s book club, pushes readers to contemplate “what we are willing to give up for people we love, and the danger of ever expecting anything in return,” Dorey-Stein, 39, said.

Dorey-Stein will be back in her hometown Thursday to speak about the book at Narberth Borough Hall at 6:30 p.m.

While women’s soccer has made headlines in recent years, Dorey-Stein said she had to overcome a number of obstacles to publish a book about female athletes.

“There are so few women’s sports novels out there, which is why I was so proud of [this book], and also why I had to fight so hard to write it,” Dorey-Stein said.

In many ways, Spectacular Things is a “love letter” to soccer, something that’s been quietly building in Dorey-Stein for decades. She began playing the sport as a child, following in her older brother’s footsteps, before going on to play travel league soccer as well as for her high school team, the Lower Merion Aces.

The book draws on a number of sources of inspiration beyond her own passion for the sport, including the 2019 U.S. women’s national team, which won the FIFA Women’s World Cup that summer in France. While attending the team’s ticker tape parade in New York that July, Dorey-Stein got the idea for the book.

“It was just one of the best days of my life,” Dorey-Stein recalled, noting how empowering it was to see so many people celebrating women’s soccer. But the market for such a book was untested and required her to not only reshape the narrative, but also continually go to bat for it, she said.

Foles also inspired one pivotal moment in the book. In the midst of the Olympics final match, Cricket is brought off the bench to goaltend after the team’s starter is injured, much the way Foles came off the bench late in the 2017 season for an injured Carson Wentz, ultimately leading the team to victory in Super Bowl LII.

It was important that “Nick Foles and Cricket [have] the same journey where it’s like they’re just going to be riding the bench forever, it seems, and then all of a sudden they get their moment,” Dorey-Stein said.

In some ways, it’s not unlike Dorey-Stein’s own story. After serving as a stenographer in the White House for five years, predominantly under the Obama administration, Dorey-Stein penned her best-selling memoir, From the Corner of the Oval. Her second book and first novel, Rock the Boat, followed in 2021, but in the interim, Dorey-Stein said she felt “unmoored” and in need of her own “Cinderella story.”

Determined to write a book about women’s soccer, she worried if that book would ever come together, noting writing it was “really, really difficult.”

“There were so many times I just was like, it’s not going to happen,” Dorey-Stein said.

But like Foles and Cricket, she held firm to her belief and made it happen.

Book Event: Beck Dorey-Stein

📍Narberth Borough Hall 📅 Thursday, Sept. 4, 6:30 p.m. 🌐 narberthbookshop.com

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