"'To understand Steve Prefontaine,' [Kenny Moore] wrote in 1972, 'it is necessary to know something about Coos Bay, Oregon. The town and the man find themselves similarly described: blunt, energetic, tough, aggressive. Coos Bay is a mill town, a fishing town, a deepwater port. Longshoremen, fishermen, and loggers are not given to quiet introspection. Coos Bay endures its difficult, elemental life in the woods, on the boats and docks with a vociferous pride. The working men insist on a hardness in their society. Youth must be initiated, must measure up." (pages 5-6)

"'A strange camaraderie grew up at the time among those of us who lost continually to Pre. It was like the unity of the townspeople in Ken Kesey's novel Sometimes a Great Notion, a feeling grown of inadequacy and envy of a man whose motto, in Kesey's words, might have been, 'never give an inch.'...