Dart League King

The Dart League King, by Keith Lee Morris, follows team members of a small town dart league on the night of the league championship. 

The story is told in third person, alternating points of view between five different characters: Russell Harmon, the self-proclaimed dart league king and founder of the dart league in Garnet Lake, Idaho; Tristan Mackey, Russell’s teammate; Vince Thompson, Russell’s dealer and sometimes friend; Kelly Ashton, Russell’s ex-girlfriend; and Brice Habersham, Russell’s dart-league nemesis and the man Russell must beat to keep his title. Each of these people has a secret; some secrets are worse, in a larger-than-life sense, than others. Morris does a terrific job of giving each of these characters a voice, and making them surprising in a way that makes the story both refreshing and troubling.

I expected a small, quirky story about a small-team dart league, but there are bigger things at stake. I didn’t expect suspense, but several of these people’s lives literally hang in the balance through the course of the story, and not everyone will have a happy ending. In a lot of ways, this is a story about luck, both good and bad, and about how the smallest decisions or errors in judgment can change the course of fate forever. That’s what good literature is all about in the end, I believe, and Morris does a fine job of showing the reader the significance of each of these people, and how nothing is too small in the big picture to make us wonder out loud about the role of fate in our lives, about how we become who we are, about the thread by which we all may (or may not) be hanging.

I wish I could tell you more, but there are so many plot elements, large and small, that I wouldn’t want to give away, because really: everything means something in this book. I don’t think Morris wasted a word. I highly recommend it.