Legs Hearts Minds: Loss and Its Remedies

In this raw, potent memoir of heartbreak and the life-saving power of fandom, an award-winning sports journalist tells the story of how he hit rock bottom—and the unlikely, unlucky soccer team that would carry him through.

“Legs Hearts Minds might just be the greatest fan memoir ever written—blazingly honest and sneakily soulful, it finally captures in words the redemptive power of sports.”—Franklin Foer, author of How Soccer Explains the World

Returning home from a long trip for ESPN, too jet-lagged to sleep, Chris Jones opened his wife’s laptop to get a little writing done. Instead, he found a series of text messages that would burn his marriage—and his world—to the ground. “In the span of twenty minutes,” Jones writes, “I lost my wife and my best friend. In the coming weeks and months, I would lose my house, half my money, and some equal measure of my boys. That wicked morning, that terrible dawn, I watched the sun peel back the longest night of my life, and I felt my anger already making room for sadness, fear, disbelief. I was forty-two years old. Nothing true of my life would be true again.”

Overwhelmed by sorrow and rage, Jones contemplated suicide. He fought to carry on, for his two sons if no one else, only to end up in an emergency room. To return to himself, he embarked on a journey to understand who he is and the mistakes he has made, to let go of anger and find forgiveness, and to give himself over to something: an underdog English soccer team from an underdog northern town called Burnley, forever destined to also-ran status. Following Burnley mirrored the ups and downs of the rest of his life, and Jones began taking the team’s lessons as his own. Together, they would navigate the long journey from hope to despair back to hope again.

How do we rebuild a life? Can something as simple as soccer give us a reason to live, offering solace and ultimately meaning? In this searing memoir, Chris Jones reveals how his love for the game brought him joy, connection, and purpose when he needed it most.

Chris Jones, a former writer-at-large for Esquire, has won two National Magazine Awards for Feature Writing. He has also written for The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal Magazine, WIRED, Golf Digest, Grantland, ESPN, and the CBC. His work was included in the Best American Sports Writing anthology six times. He was also a producer and writer for "Away," the Netflix series starring Hilary Swank. Born in London, he lives in Peterborough, Ontario, with his family. Legs Hearts Minds is dedicated to his mum.