This book, unlike most of my others, started with the title…My Foolish Heart. I heard it in a song and loved it…and then thought, “What determines a foolish heart?” Obviously, someone who loves someone else illogically. It struck me then that love is really quite illogical – we get hurt by it all the time. A wise, conservative person might say that love isn’t worth the risk, but only a person who has never truly been in love, which sparked me to think up a crazy premise – what if a person who had never been in love gave out romance advice? Where would she get her advice – how about romance novels?

In fact, what if she devised her own “perfect man” list and could “order him up” so to speak? However, the truth is we rarely fall for someone we predict – usually we are taken by surprise. I loved the paradox of a woman who thinks she knows what she wants and then discovers she loves someone completely different. But…how to accomplish this? Well, what if she falls in love with one of her listeners…but he’s nothing like she suspects? What if, in fact, he’s the boy who drives her crazy? Enter…My Foolish Heart!

Backstory from Susan Warren:

I am a football mom -- I have two strapping sons who play football. I love football and everything about it. In fact, I love football so much, I even wrote a Christmas story two years ago about football. Because, see, football is more than just a sport…it’s training boys into men. Football is hard. It hurts. A player has to learn to play through the pain, play for his teammates, to listen and trust his coach, to give it everything he has. It’s the modern day version of training young warriors for battle.

Around our home, we take football very seriously. Not so seriously that we think we’re creating future NFL stars, but enough that we buy quality equipment, eat right, encourage the boys to work out in the off season…and attend every game. And, that’s saying something because we live in a tiny pocket of northern Minnesota. Our closest team is two hours away. And sometimes we play in snow. And sleet. And, while the boys are slipping around the field, I’m in the stands, in my parka and mittens and hat cheering until I’m hoarse. Because football players need fans.

Coaches also need fans. I’m a huge fan of our coaching staff – Mitch Dorr, Mike Boomer, and the rest of the Cook County Viking Football staff. They have a huge responsibility. It’s this responsibility that I laid upon the shoulders of my two heroes – Seb and Caleb. I wanted to contrast the differences between the men, how one wanted to relive his glory days…and one wanted to create glory for his players. My biggest challenge was getting into the mind of a coach. I talked to our coaches and asked them for advice. Coach Dorr even wrote me a couple plays! And I asked my son to walk me through practice – pretending he was a coach. I read books on coaching. I watched every episode of Friday Night Lights! Most of all, I tried to divest myself of my “mom” skin and get inside the skin of a coach. I’m not sure I got it right, but I think it’s close.

But this book isn’t really about football. It’s about fear. And overcoming fear. And there’s no better example of overcoming fear than looking it straight in the face of a 300 lb. defender about to mow you over and possibly break your legs. Life can sometimes feel that way – that you are staring at the impossible – or worse, that it’s about to tackle you, take you out and make you suffer. Football teaches you to take a deep breath and charge forward, to take it out before it hurts you.

My Foolish Heart is a girl’s football book – it’s not about plays or coaching…it’s about small town life, the smells and joys of summer, of secrets and true love, and most of all falling in love with heroes who aren’t afraid to give it all they have to become men to whom we’d give our foolish hearts.