CHAMPION OF THE WORLD

Pepper Van Dean, the former wrestling champion of the world, is now reduced to being the star attraction in a traveling carnival, along with his wife, an expert card dealer, working the gambling tent.

Pepper puts his life in jeopardy every day in the performance of his act. When he's offered the job of training the first black wrestler to be given a shot at the wrestling title, he and Moira see it as a chance to get back in the game. The two wrestlers and their wives become friends as Pepper trains with him, but Pepper knows that this fight has been fixed, as was his own last championship bout. Things will not go as the gangsters had planned, and Moira insures that they will both survive.

Dundas has the magic to create characters we really care about and a plot full of suprises.

Chad Dundas has worked as a sportswriter for ESPN, Bleacher Report, NBC Sports and The Sporting News, among others. His short stories have appeared in the Beloit Fiction Journal, Sycamore Review, Sou'Wester and Thuglit. In 2003 he was a fiction fellow at the Iowa Writer's Workshop and earned an MFA from the University of Montana in 2006. CHAMPION OF THE WORLD is his first novel. He is currently at work on a second.