The Gambler's Game

Right off the bat (pun intended), Bill’s aspirations strike a chord with the vagabonds within us all. It connects with those internal parts of ourselves aching for something new, something inspiring, something completely foreign, so far flung from our places of comfort, packaged into a life-altering adventure that confronts the stagnant qualities of the status quo. The way Bill pursues his goals with Gatsby-esque certainty is truly rousing. It creates a bond with all those who wish to possess the same conviction to go after the things they crave the most from this world. While the main purpose of this story is to recount the life of a man who found himself—or rather, put himself—at the center of truly extraordinary circumstances, it doubles as a book that encourages and inspires without necessarily meaning to. I cannot totally speak on the intentions of the author; this is solely my interpretation of the prose that stood out to me across the pages of this book. However, I do believe that it is a testament to the success of James Darnborough’s writing that a biographical tale is capable of eliciting such existential emotions out of its readers as an unintended by-product. Not many authors can boast of such a feat.

Being as engrossed in this rollercoaster ride of a story, I felt compelled to scour the internet for supplementary sources to satiate my own light curiosities. Besides a handful of articles describing his gambling exploits and a few baseball-related stories, there wasn’t much else to find from my admittedly shallow search. It made me wonder about the providence of the source material the author must have drawn from to retell his grandfather’s elaborate life story. Be it skyscrapers of meticulously filled journals, noting down each exchange written by William Darnbrough himself left in the attic/basement of the family home for his descendant and author of this book, James Darnborough, to stumble upon when his writing skills ripened, or a revival of the oral storytelling tradition, we readers are grateful that this story has seen the light of day and appreciate the extraordinary quality of narration we are given.

No matter what the source material was, it would have been virtually impossible to preserve every single spoken word, every little action carried out by the people William Darnbrough interacted with, without the use of modern technology. This is where James Darnborough’s artistic touch shines through. He has managed to paint the grey, foggy expanses between factual, chronological events with vivid dialogue and gripping imagery.