Summary

In These Girls, Hope Is A Muscle is the story of the Amherst Lady Hurricanes and their rise to state champions. Author Madeleine Blais begins the book with a prologue explaining the challenges that any female basketball team faced. There was a strong element of sexism in the sport, and a lack of respect, money, and popularity that did not affect male teams.

To illustrate this, Blais tells a personal story about one of the female athletes and an interaction with the author's own family. Kristin Marvin, the team's starting center, came to Blais' house to babysit the kids. She took them outside to shoot some hoops. Blais' son was skeptical. He was not expecting a girl to be any good at sports. Indeed, his own mother was not particularly athletic.

Blais then segues into her own formative years here, describing how...