Plot Summary of Running Loose

The novel begins telling the backgroun information about Trout and about Louie. It includes a very entertaining date story by Boomer. (Those of you who read this book will know that this is a joke) This year Louie is a senior at Trout High School, and he plays on the football team, which incidentally is back-to-back state champions. Thanks to help from his friend Carter, Louie will be a starter on the team, and he is until it all goes south. After he lands himself a beautiful girlfriend and everything seems to be going good, Lednecky gets the team to play dirty football and purposely injure an opposing player. Louie goes ballistic and gets kicked off of the team. Life was okay after that with some romantic times with Becky. Tragedy strikes again, Louie's mother comes down to the station where Louie is working, and looks panic-stricken. Immediately Louie thinks that his Dad is hurt, but then she tells him that it is Becky. While she was driving along, accidentally a group of motorcyclists forced her off of the bridge. She died almost immediately. At the funeral, Louie goes ballistic one more time. He starts criticizing the preacher for asking god for help. Louie doesn't think that god is doing anything and he is to blame. So Carter and Boomer drag him out of the church and give him time to calm down. In the coming days Louie becomes very distressed. The assistant coach of the football team is also the track coach, and he gets Louie to run track. Not only does he run track, but he is also very good at it. He ends up being a regional qualifier in the two-mile category.