Running the Good Race
A Story of Faith, Ford and Fishing
Running the Good Race is a captivating memoir about traipsing the globe and a life of faith.
Dennis Blue’s memoir Running the Good Race concerns his rich life spent in corporate America, traveling abroad, following his faith, and establishing his own fishing business after retirement.
Blue, an Indianapolis-born farm boy who moved as a kid to the Detroit area and eventually graduated from Michigan State University, handled human resources for the Ford Motor Company, but his story extends beyond offices, conference rooms, and the factory floor. A thirty-year corporate career took him all over the world, to Ford outposts in Venezuela, Australia, New Zealand, and Brazil.
Blue, who went on to found the True Blue Sport Fishing charter that led expeditions across the Western Hemisphere, writes about work, adventures abroad, his faith, and mission trips as a pilot. It’s a detailed memoir that flaunts a mnemonic iron trap of a memory. Blue graphically recalls a childhood spent thrashing soybeans, fishing for bullhead, trapping muskrats, and hunting for duck.
The book compellingly conveys experiences like milking cows, trying to reel in marlins while on chartered boats, and trying to land a Cessna under spotty circumstances. It excels at descriptions, as with a riotous protest outside a plant and a close brush with a “gigantic United Airlines plane” that fortunately ended with both aircraft safely on the ground.
Running the Good Race proceeds in chronological order, recapping Blue’s youth, lengthy career in human resources management, and heartfelt Christianity. It’s an excellent psychological portrait that sheds light on Blue’s thinking. It illuminates his gratitude toward a driver in a foreign country who doubled as a translator for several weeks, brings to life his fear during rough patches while piloting planes, and shows how his religious beliefs guide his critical life decisions.
The prose is often arresting, as when Blue remembers silence broken only by the chirping of birds or the croaking of frogs, or when he soars over “the vast undeveloped interior of the country, miles of brown parched land interspersed with ribbons of green delineating the rivers.” There’s a strong observational power at work that’s at once tactile and resonant.
The globe-trotting is enough to hold anyone’s interest, and Blue captivates with tales of derring-do, as when he airlifted a snakebitten boy to help. Tales of swells on the Australian coastline, of contentious labor relations, and of surviving a robbery in Brazil in which a gunman jammed his weapon through the car window are included, and there’s enough here to make the promised follow-up an interesting prospect.
Running the Good Race is a captivating memoir about traipsing the globe and a life of faith.
Reviewed by
Joseph S. Pete
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
