The Golden Age of Hockey Literature Has Finally Arrived

The Atlantic · John Swansburg · 2026-11-06 14:00 UTC

The golden age of hockey literature has finally arrived.

Pity the Canadian book reviewer in the autumn of 1980. An American publisher has announced, with some fanfare, a forthcoming title about the national pastime—the Canadian national pastime. Amazons: An Intimate Memoir by the First Woman Ever to Play in the National Hockey League promises to tell the story of Cleo Birdwell’s debut season with the New York Rangers. Of course, as a Canadian in good standing, you know that no woman has ever played in the NHL; there is no Cleo Birdwell. But the people behind the book are committed to the bit. At the Canadian Booksellers Association convention, held that summer in Toronto, a leggy model impersonated Birdwell, signing advance copies in a Rangers jersey. “She’s tough and sexy,” the book’s publisher whispered to a Globe and Mail reporter.

Clearly this book demands attention. Perhaps the charade might even provide a welcome distraction after Canada’s rather unmiraculous sixth-place finish at Lake Placid. But what awaits within its pages confounds. The on-ice action is overshadowed by ever more elaborate accounts of Birdwell’s sexual adventures. In the course of one season, she sleeps with the Rangers’ head coach, the Rangers’ general manager, a former Rangers player, and one very jet-lagged tennis star. This is an incomplete list. In the brutal assessment of one critic in Calgary, Amazons is “little more than hardcover softcore porn that will disappoint hockey fans and heavy breathers alike.”

But Amazons wasn’t smut, or not exactly. Its author was Don DeLillo. His publisher took pains to guard this secret, but there was no disguising his writing from those who already admired it. Colin McEnroe, reviewing the book for the Hartford Courant, seems to have been the first to identify DeLillo’s authorship in print. “ ‘Amazons’ is not only his book,” he wrote. “It’s his best book.”

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