Like fluffy-seme serials Ugly Little Communist House and Split-Self, Season in the Red chapters are broken up into two or three installments. The following summaries are of full chapters

The abused looking white phone had the design style of an old rotary phone and big plastic buttons that lit up subtly as if to say 'Yes, I am your phone. Yes, I am ringing.'

It was easily the scariest thing Martin had ever seen.

Martin Ostrowski is an unusual fellow. He's Polish, but spent most of his young life playing hockey in Russia. As he leaves the crumbing world of Russian hockey for North America, he has considerable trouble adapting to the new culture and the strange values of a capitalistic sports machine.

Elsewhere Martin's future teammates are preparing for the upcoming season. On again off again minor league player Gregg Avery vows that this is the year he find a stable place on the major league team.

The narrator, an outsider herself in the old-boys club of sports reporting, struggles with her ignorance about the sport of hockey and the ethically questionable position she's accepted.

Skirmishes and drills in practice were meant to stimulate game situations as much as possible, but they were controlled and orchestrated in such a way that sometimes it seemed one side was being used as a chew toy to train the other. The question was, which side?

While the narrator begins interviewing some of the older natural leaders of team (Mike Falco and Damian Barad) other veteran players are taking some interest in the young hopefuls, but divisions between the North American and the former players begin to become obvious.

Moody bitter Russian forward Alex Chernov warns Martin that to survive in this league he will have to prove himself every shift or every game for the rest of his career because he's foreign and a bit on the small side, people will assume he's soft and weak even if the stats contradict that.

The idea that a team could make more money in a place where children did not grow up playing hockey, where love of the sport was not innate, where hockey was barely a flicker in the minds of the people defied reason.

Martin is disturbed by the condition of his rich new American team's arena, which seems to be falling apart. The narrator notes that the considerable differences between Nikolai Tumanov and Alex Chernov might discourage them from being friends if they were not both labelled as “moody Russians” in a foreign league. Gregg Avery tries to get Martin to help a struggling teammate out by setting him up for a goal whenever possible. Cici explains to Martin that even though hockey is more popular in certain areas, pro-teams in these areas aren't necessarily the strongest in skill or financially.

Like most Slavs he over-pronounced the 'th' sound on the beginning of the word and that gave it a light huffing sound that seemed almost defeated, like he was spitting out the word in disgust.

The narrator starts torturing Martin in English and using the opportunity to interview him a little. Martin reveals that Nikolai is extremely anti-Communist and had a difficult time in the Russian leagues because of his rebellious nature.

Meanwhile the final cuts for the team have been made and the younger boys who have survived training camp go out to celebrate together. Over beers the boys discuss what Martin's hockey nickname should be, finally settling on “Skiwee” thanks to his small size.

…you've had the same government for the whole time and not enough time for really crappy things to happen. Look at Russian history, every hundred years or so there's someone new in power starving and murdering everyone else.

The narrator has put out a praising article on Martin and Cici, understanding the fickle nature of pro-sports cuts it out for Martin and tapes it to his stall.

Gregg Avery, Kerry Shift and Mike Falco try to teach Martin how to fight, thinking that his size will make him an easy target. Craig Dekkecon also gives Martin some advice on how to protect himself. Ironically, it's not the hockey players who threaten Martin the most, as soon as he signs his new contract his agent shows up with news that the Russian sports ministry is claiming the contract is invalid over visa issues.

The idea of Nikolai getting along with anyone named “Moose” was dreamer's twaddle. Nikolai getting along with Avery while Damian, Kerry Shift, Cici, Alex and Mike gleefully shot at any flash of human in sight– be it from the enemy team or their own teammates– seemed highly unlikely as well.

Martin's situation begin to look even worse as the Russian sports ministry threatens to keep Russian players out of New York if Martin isn't sent back. The Russian players realize that this is less about Martin and more about a once great sports system in turmoil striking out against the North American league anyway it can, but still they see nothing Martin can do to save himself.

Alex asks Martin why he wants to stay and points out that Martin has always dreamed of playing for CSKA and the national team. Martin explains that although he wasn't even sure he wanted to play in North America to begin with now he feels like he can't leave until he knows the limits of his talent.

While in legal limbo Martin is barred from practicing with the team, so he spends some time getting to know he surroundings better and studying North American hockey through televised games. His team is playing poorly, largely because they have no unity and do not stand up for one another. Head Coach Mike Dallas sets about trying to change that by ordering the team on the bus and taking them to play paintball.

Stig Patrick shrugged. “He's fit and healthy. Can he take licking and keep on ticking? The answer is the same for everyone else on the ice: depends on the angle of the licking.”

Paintball is not a raging success. Avery and Nikolai conflict almost immediately and Avery and Dekkecon end up taking Cici as a prisoner of war with the hope of trading themselves out of the game. The North American players have no getting along with the affable Czech Cici, who has mostly Americanized himself and isn't as serious as the Russians.

Meanwhile fellow Russian Leo Witte and Nikolai talk about the 1998 Olympics where professional players might finally be permitted to play. Leo explains that this is his number 1 priority and he will give up his current multi-million dollar contract to go if he has to. Nikolai isn't impressed by the Olympics and has had his fill of 'honor for country'

While they're talking Nikolai realizes that Alex, who is technically a member of the opposing paintball team, is sleeping in a tree rather than playing. Nikolai takes aim and shoots him out of the tree, causing Alex to injure his ankle in the process.

Fortunately, the Russian ministry of sports has done a mysterious and uncharacteristic u-turn and Martin's problems have virtually disappeared. The boys try to prepare him for the important hole he must fill on the team.

And there it was, I have never read such a maliciously worded scouting report in my life. The words “a contango of talent corrupted by an indignant and petulant disposition” and “a cantankerous slug of a backchecker” mixed with more conventional phrases like “takes whole periods off”

It takes time for Martin to adjust to the pressure of his new role filling in for a true snipper like Alex. Veteran Mike Falco coaches him a little bit after practice and helps him calm down and focus. The communication snafus for the team's Russian goaltender Leo Witte lead to trouble and Martin wonders if he even speaks English at all.

Marty has developed a reputation for scoring gutsy, reckless goals and his hard nose style helps him grow closer to his North American teammates. Damian, though, thinks Martin can draw Alex out of his shell and sends him to help the injured Russian get to the practice center for his check up.

The team's arrogant overly aggressive original goaltender Jeff Buckley returns under the worst possible circumstances and his attitude intensifies existing tensions.

Not that Martin was totally against this idea. There were a lot of very appealing facets to it: hot homemade meals, complimentary laundry service, company and human contact in ways that didn't necessarily involve banana hammocks and mouth guards,

Gregg Avery offers to help Nikolai deal with his fan mail, a good deed that gets him grief from Jeff Buckley. Frustrated with the attitudes in the press box, the narrator decides to watch the game from the crowd and gets introduced to a few season ticket holders.

Since Martin seems likely to stick around on the team, Damian Barad decides he needs a more stable place to live … preferably with one of his teammates, and sets Martin up at his house (as a free babysitter for his young daughter). Martin likes the Barad House but begins to feel as if Damian (who immigrated as a child) is pretending to be more Russian than he feels in order to unite the team.

Alex is almost ready to come back from injury and has taking a shine to Martin and as a consequence is a little bit more open to the press than he usually is. He also helps Martin out as the team has its big annual FanFest event (which Martin spends most of his time hiding from).

After which, while Martin and Gregg are digging out their coats, something falls out of Alex's pocket that has deep significance for Martin

It was dark and at some point during dinner it had started to drizzle, coating the streets with a slick wet gleam right out off film noir. The lights from the restaurant glowed warm oranges and yellows with flints of green cutting through where the beams refracted off the window pane.

Alex comes back but the team continues to play inconsistently. Something is obviously bothering Martin. At the same time both his play time and his role on the team are being cut back by Head Coach Mike Dallas.

When Alex has a flippant response to a silly team game in practice, Martin goes off on him and tells the Russian that if he doesn't care about playing on the team he should just go home so that people who do care have the opportunity.

Tensions are high as the team has their rookie dinner in Pittsburgh, a city that turns normally cheerful Cici into a gloomy and moody mess. Isolated from his own friends and deeply troubled by something, Martin reveals to the narrator that Alex's past is not exactly as he has presented it.

The narrator does some digging, but it isn't until she talks to Gregg Avery that she pieces together what Alex's big secret is. Knowing that Martin has probably been feeding the same information to other reporters, she considers how to present it so that it's not so controversial but runs out of time when a rival scoops her and spins the story to present Alex in the worst possible light.

The one of the advantages of being young is being unable to conceptualize the true nature of risk because you lack the experience to fully understand how bad things can get. It's this quality that makes us ambitious and cocksure. It seemed sad that at twenty-two Cici, still such a young man, had been burned badly enough to start thinking like an old man.

Betraying Alex actually does nothing to solidify Martin's position on the team and he is soon after sent down to the minor leagues. The team begins to play well mostly because they are closing ranks around Alex in the resulting media storm. No player is more protective than Cici, who thwarts the narrator several times as she tries to approach Chernov.

All is not 100% well though, Nikolai is taking out the stress of the controversy on Gregg Avery, while Alex has pulled a muscle and is again out of the line up.

Frustrated with Cici's interference the narrator sets off to find out why Cici hates Pittsburgh so much and learns that his careless lifestyle as a young player years ago caused his team to lose the championship title in a particularly humiliating way.

The player next to him snorted and giggled under his breath. Martin couldn't help the light flush that burned at his cheeks– Nonono, this was not going to happen. He was not going to let a bunch of kids freak him out. They were babies, only one or two of them even *approaching* thirty years of age.

Martin finds himself in lost and alone in Providence, Rhode Island, where his team's minor league affiliate is. Someone was supposed to pick him up and take him to the team, but no one is around. He finds his own where there eventually but has missed most of practice. One of his new teammates, Tony “Lemur” Lerman fills his skates with shaving cream, a gesture that Martin does not take kindly.

At practice Martin meets really his only foreign teammate, a young Russian forward everyone calls Gabby. Gabby tried to convince Martin that Lemur really isn't that bad and didn't mean to offend him. He convinces Martin to go out drinking with the team and get to know them better.

Bonding goes almost too well and Martin ends up drunk as a skunk. Lemur has to carry him home, with Gabby trailing behind. The next morning Martin is so hungover he again misses practice and the coach threatens to bench him for the entire weekend if he doesn't pull himself together.

He sighed, lifted his shoulder pads and let them fall to the floor with a thud. Then he stayed there, head between his legs like a lifeless piece of meat folded up and hung in a smoker.

The narrator finds that Gabby, Lemur, and Martin all tell dramatically different versions of the same events and wonders whether what each person chooses to say to leave out speaks to their character more than the truth ever would.

During an interview Martin suddenly digresses to a strange story about Mike Falco and Cici taking him to play mini-golf.

Still trying to iron out discrepancies in Martin's, Lemur's and Gabby's stories, the narrator starts looking at boxscores. She talks again with Lemur, who provides some insight into Gabby's character and then speculates that Martin's sudden fall from grace with the team was connected to an injury. An idea the narrator quickly dismisses.

The gap where a tooth had been knocked out and simply never replaced making the simple touch of the surrounding teeth to his lower lip look like a bite. One could see a thousand things– most of them excuses– running through his head as Alex watched, unwilling to let him squirm or deflect his way out of this.

Martin discovers that Lemur is ambidextrous, a tremendous advantage that he does not use in games because he does not want to push the team to get him the custom stick he would need to really us it. Instead, Martin uses his own money to buy the sticks to experiment with and convinces Lemur to practice using them.

Back in New York, Nikolai's bully of Gregg Avery is getting completely out of hand and Cici asks Alex to step in and do something about it. Alex doesn't believe Nikolai is anymore likely to listen to he than anyone else and challenges Cici to stand up to him instead.

Cici avoided entering, holding onto the door to keep his balance as he craned his neck over the entrance but didn't dare take a step. The press room was off limits to the players the same way the velociraptor pen at Jurassic Park might be off limits to a cow.

After a bench clearing brawl in the middle of a game Martin and Lemur find themselves suspended for a game … and then snowed in and stuck in their hotel room with the rest of the team, which they make the most of by acting like five year olds having snowball fights and building snowmen.

Meanwhile, Cici and Damian find out from Damian's daughter that Martin was taking some kind of medicine in secret. Initially assuming that it's steroids, in fact the pills turn out to be prescription pain killers. Cici explains to the narrator that they did go to play mini golf a while back, but it didn't play out at all like Martin say it did. Instead Mike Falco “accidentally” hit Martin with a shot, bruising his hand pretty badly and– as Cici now realizes– maybe causing a more serious injury.

The most glaring omission from Martin's story is that Alex was with them on this outing, knew the injury was worse than Martin was pretending and had tried to convince Martin to tell the team doctors.

”…I could be the best hockey player in the world and I would still be a foreigner. They would still treat me like I owed them something. I'm not allowed to do my job and make my money, people are constantly expecting me to be grateful like they sacrificed a spot on their team to save me from something. This league didn't save me from Russia, I earned my right to play here by my talent.”

The narrator finally gets Alex to agree to talk and he admits to asking his father to stop the Russian sports ministry from harassing Martin and to allow him to play in North America. He explains that he did this because he respected Martin's wish to test himself against the world's best and felt that opportunity should not be taken away. He also reveals that contrary to what Martin obviously believes, he did not betray Martin's trust and tell Head Coach Mike Dallas about his secret injury, but he knows who did.

Gregg Avery is finally given his opportunity to be something more than a 3rd line player, but his success was just a planned ploy to secure a trade to another team.

“Back from Purgatory I see,” Alex said.

“Providence,” Martin corrected, as oblivious to the sly quip as one would expect.

Martin returns to New York and makes peace with Alex. Damian confronts him about the pills and makes Martin promise to trust the team and let the team trust him. Martin agrees and they go out on the ice to play another important game.

The book closes with Head Coach Mike Dallas and some of the training staff cleaning up the locker room after a too rambunctious post game celebration. One of the trainer's accidentally knocks over a garbage pale and the pill bottle of Martin's drugs falls out where Dallas finds it….