WEST LEBANON — Christian Pulisic helped send the U.S. Men’s National Soccer Team into the knockout stages of the 2022 FIFA World Cup with the lone goal of the Americans’ 1-0 victory over Iran on Tuesday.

Now, Upper Valley locals don’t have to look far for reading material on the USMNT’s biggest star.

West Lebanon resident Bonnie Barber published a biography of Pulisic on Nov. 19 — two days before the Americans’ first World Cup match — titled “The Hershey Kid,” an homage to Pulisic’s hometown of Hershey, Pa. The book is intended for readers aged 10 and up, especially students working on school book reports.

Barber, who grew up in Maryland and played Division I college tennis while earning a degree in journalism at Boston University, has lived in the Upper Valley since 2002 with her husband, Dartmouth College women’s tennis coach Bob Dallis. She worked in communications for Dartmouth and later for the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center.

She published the book using Dallis’s surname as her first name to avoid confusion with another book on Pulisic written by Bonnie Hinman in 2020.

The Valley News caught up with Barber to learn about her career, her idea for the book and her writing process. This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity and brevity.

Valley News: What was your upbringing like and what role did sports play?

Barber: I grew up as a tennis player, but when soccer started to get big, I helped my dad coach a team that my younger brother and sister were on. I was always interested in soccer as well, but tennis was my main sport. I was too tall and slow for soccer. At Boston University, we used to come up to Dartmouth all the time and played all the Ivy League schools.

VN: Is this your first book?

Barber: Yes, it is. When my nieces and nephews were growing up, I had wanted to write a book because I had trouble finding sports books that I wanted to get for them. But I just didn’t have the time. But finally, during the pandemic, I had more time on my hands, and thought I could finally start doing this.

I was talking to the librarian in Norwich about having difficulty finding books for that fifth grade and up age group who often have to write book reports.

I had this in the back of my mind to do a sports biography because I had always really loved reading biographies when I was growing up.

VN: How did you come to pick Christian Pulisic as your player to write about? Obviously, he’s among the best American male soccer players of his generation and maybe all time.

Barber: His story was really interesting to me. Growing up as a nationally ranked tennis player, I just saw a lot of poor parenting, and the more I learned about his story, his parents seemed to do it really well. There have been articles over the years about parents trying to raise the super athlete.

But Christian, even though both of his parents played college soccer and his dad played professionally and also was a coach, he was always really self-motivated. He would be out in the backyard practicing endlessly, begging them to come out and be his goalie. It was about helping him in a constructive way rather than a destructive way.

VN: What was your process like, especially given you’d never written a book of this length? Were you able to talk to Christian or anyone in his family?

Barber: No, I didn’t talk to Christian. Because it was for a younger audience, I felt that there was enough information out there that I could draw from.

I read everything I could find, watched every video. The Players Tribune had done a video series about him. I used a lot of primary sources.

VN: Was the goal to have it released around the time of this World Cup so that fans would be able to get excited for it?

Barber: Yes, definitely. That was the goal all along. Originally I was going to stop it at a different period in time, and then I decided to include them qualifying for the World Cup. It was kind of a mad sprint toward the end, because I had to do all that research that I hadn’t done. I tend to over-research, so it can be really time-consuming.

I was going to end it with the 2021 UEFA Champions League win with Chelsea, but then it just seemed like he had that monkey off his back from the U.S. failing to qualify in 2018.

And that had been such a heartbreaking moment for him. I wanted to end with that positive of him achieving his goal of getting the team back.

VN: Do you plan to go to some of the local libraries or schools to talk about the book?

Barber: Definitely. One of my friends works at the Enfield Public Library, so that’s all in the beginning stages. It’s been fun to hear from some of the kids who have read it already or are in the process of reading it, their parents are really excited that their kid is plowing through the book. I’ve tried to make it as much of a page-turner as possible.

Christian has talked about wanting to get kids excited from playing in the World Cup, as he did when he was a kid watching Landon Donovan play. It sounds like a lot of kids are getting really excited, and his whole goal is to build a soccer nation. So hopefully after his incredible goal and the team’s performance in the World Cup so far, more and more kids will kids will get excited about soccer or any sport, as well as reading.

VN: What’s next for you as a writer?

Barber: It’s just trying to figure out what the next topic will be. I have a few things in mind, but I have to start my research. I’m really interested in the idea of writing a parent’s handbook or guidebook on how to successfully raise a young athlete who could become a world class athlete. That one would be more for adults, probably, and I’d like to do primary source interviews with everyone.

Benjamin Rosenberg can be reached at brosenberg@vnews.com or 603-727-3302.