F.X. Toole is best known as author of the short story that inspired the Oscar-winning movie Million Dollar Baby. He did not live to see the publication of his first novel, Pound For Pound, nor even to complete a polished draft. But given the subject matter – small-time boxers trying to make it to the pros – there would be something wrong with the novel if it didn't read a little rough around the edges. In fact, there is a greater sense of completeness here – in the pitch-perfect dialogue, in the well-timed collision of intersecting story lines, in the gritty insider's view of the ring – than we find in most carefully crafted efforts coming out of today's MFA programs.

While the novel is about boxing, let's be straight: it's as much a novel about boxing as The Old Man and the Sea is a novel about fishing. F.X. Toole shows a firm command of that rare art: understatement. He seems to tell his readers nothing but the facts. And yet, running beneath a beguiling transparency of words is a depth that, by the last page, has welled to the surface and can no longer be glossed over. By the last page, we shake our heads and realize that all along we were really reading a story about the promise of redemption.

The promise comes in many forms. For the young kid running to the neighborhood gym after school, boxing holds the promise of freedom from older bullies. For the hoards of serious amateurs who serve as the story's backdrop – the Chicano's, Mexicans, Tex-Mexes, blacks, the Irish poor – boxing is the only way they know to free themselves from their prisons of class and race. But for the novel's main characters, the motivations are more powerful still.

Dan Cooley is an aging trainer who, with his partner, Earl, owns an auto-body shop with a gym in the back. Dan and Earl know the art of boxing. They have "juice" and they have integrity. They can teach an aspiring amateur to throw a hard punch, but more than that, they can teach him how to box pretty. As a young man, Dan had a shot at the welterweight title, but lost when Eloy Garza, the Wolf, landed a punch that crushed the orbital bones around one eye and ended his boxing career. Even years later, Dan suspects that something was wrong with the match, but he is powerless to say what.

And so begins a litany of loss. Dan loses the title. One by one, he loses his children to accidents and illness. Later, his wife dies. Now, all that remains is his grandson, Tim Pat, a young boy who is showing signs that he shares his grandfather's aptitude in the ring. One afternoon, Tim Pat takes a break from the gym to get ice cream from a passing truck. He stumbles into the path of an oncoming car and dies at the scene.