Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe by David Maraniss (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe by David Maraniss Charlie Bevis David Maraniss. Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2022, 659 pp. Cloth, $32.50. This biography of Jim Thorpe is an enlightening examination of the famous athlete who had to endure a lifetime of severe prejudice against Native Americans within American society during the first half of the twentieth century. Of particular interest to this journal's readership, Maraniss delves deeply into Thorpe's lesser-known baseball career, which serves as a springboard for the author's fresh perspective of Thorpe's inner character. The broad outline of Thorpe's sporting life is well known to avid readers of sports history. He attended the Carlisle Indian Industrial School where he catapulted to fame as an All-American college football player and Olympic decathlon gold medalist, was summarily stripped of his Olympic honors, and then became a professional football and baseball player. While Maraniss examines in great detail the exploitation of Thorpe's Native American heritage, he eschews the perspective taken by prior Thorpe biographers "to view his story as tragedy" and instead considers Thorpe's life to be "a story of perseverance against the odds" (4). By capably developing this theme, Maraniss supplants Kate Buford's superbly researched 2010 book to become the definitive Thorpe biographer. Maraniss receives high scores in this reviewer's essential elements of a sports-related biography. He extends the exploration of Thorpe's impact to the sporting world and its broader cultural influence by adding new intellectual perspectives. He uncovers new research material while revisiting archival sources originally tapped by Buford, mining them for additional material and including more of the evidence in the text. Maraniss, a prolific biographer better known for his 2012 book about Barack Obama than his 2006 look at baseball legend Roberto Clemente, writes in an engaging narrative style as he unfolds his take on Thorpe's perseverance. Maraniss really shines in his interpretation of the subject's character, always the steepest challenge faced by a biographer. He portrays Thorpe as having quiet tenacity through perseverance, rather than muted acquiescence that [End Page 126] defeats him. It's an ambitious task of character development, but Maraniss credibly builds the argument through an analysis of a series of ups and downs in Thorpe's life. Baseball plays a central role in this character assessment, beginning with Thorpe's minor league years in North Carolina in 1909 and 1910 where he "crossed the blurry line from amateur to professional" that triggered the forfeiture of his Olympic medals (129). Maraniss reveals new details about Thorpe's escapades in North Carolina and his eventual public outing as a professional athlete by an obscure Worcester, Massachusetts newspaper in 1913. When viewed alone, Thorpe's life in baseball would signal resignation. Maraniss, though, views baseball and football in combination to display Thorpe's tenacity, intertwining his activities in baseball in the spring and summer with those of football in the fall to develop his perseverance theme. In 1915, after Thorpe's initial major league years with the New York Giants, he was mired in the minor leagues at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. However, that fall he first played pro football with the Ohio-based Canton Bulldogs, which accelerated his pro football career into the nascent years of the NFL during the 1920s. This fostered a baseball upswing that saw Thorpe return to the major leagues in 1917, have a great season in 1919 with the Boston Braves, before once again being relegated to the minor leagues for the 1920 season, this time with the Akron team in the International League. Fortuitously, Akron was just twenty-five miles from Canton, where the NFL was organized for the 1920 season, which accelerated his football career while his pro baseball career went into a tailspin. By 1923 Thorpe's life in pro football was in a downturn when he played for the Oorang Indians, a team sponsored by a dog breeder. Surprisingly, baseball was a rescue vehicle. In 1924 Thorpe played for a semipro baseball team in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Maraniss uses excerpts from the many letters Thorpe wrote...