Kimberly Taws of The Country Bookshop talks with Lyndsey D'Arcangelo and Britni de la Cretaz about the women's football league conceived by a businessman in the early 1970's.

It was conceived as a gimmick and a publicity stunt to capitalize on the popularity of Second Wave Feminism and the passage of Title IX. Recruiting women from across the country, he learned that women really wanted to play, and play hard.

Hail Mary is the story of the unlikely rise of the National Women's Football League and the players who loved a game that society told them they shouldn't be playing. In fourteen cities around the country, these athletes broke new barriers and showed adoring crowds what women were capable of physically.

Thousands of people came to watch-perhaps to gawk at first-but then, in the end, to cheer. Hail Mary is a rollicking chronicle of fearless women-players on the Detroit Demons, the Toledo Troopers, the LA Dandelions, and more-bringing us into the stadiums where they broke records, the small-town bars where they were recruited, and the backrooms where the league was conceived, and where it ended.

Hail Mary is a celebration of women athletes and their fight on and off the field, and a powerful story of the league that changed their lives and the course of women's sports.

Lyndsey D'Arcangelo writes about women's college basketball and the WNBA for The Athletic. Her articles, columns and profiles on female/LGBTQ+ athletes have previously appeared in The Ringer, Deadspin, espnW/ESPN, Teen Vogue, The Buffalo News, The Huffington Post, NBC OUT and more. She received a Notable Mention in the 2018 Best American Sports Writing anthology for her story, "My Father, Trump and The Buffalo Bills." Lyndsey lives in Buffalo, NY.

Britni de la Cretaz is a freelance writer who focuses on the intersection of sports and gender. They are the former sports columnist for Longreads and for Bitch Media. Their work has appeared in the New York Times, Rolling Stone, espnW, Vogue, The Washington Post, Teen Vogue, The Ringer, Bleacher Report, The Atlantic, and more. Their work on racism in Boston sports media received the 2017 Nellie Bly Award for Investigative Journalism from the Transformative Culture Project, and that story was also a Notable Story in the 2018 Best American Sports Writing. Their writing on the queer history of women's baseball for Narratively was nominated for a prestigious baseball writing award, the 2019 SABR Analytics Research Award. They live in the Boston area.