NIAGARA FALLS, Ontario — A little more than a year ago, the former N.H.L. player Val James handed his wife, Ina, the first draft of his autobiography and asked her to read it.

She could not get through it, which did not surprise him.

Ina James thought she knew the gist of his story. In 1982, Val became the first American-born black player in the N.H.L., a milestone he said passed without acknowledgment from the league or his team, the Buffalo Sabres. Willie O’Ree, a Canadian, broke the N.H.L. color barrier in 1958, but James is believed to have been only the seventh black player to follow in the next 24 years.

Raised on Long Island — hardly a hockey hotbed in those days — James played only 14 games in parts of two seasons, finishing with the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1986-87. He made his mark as an enforcer, mainly in the American Hockey League, when Americans were beginning to push into a sport dominated by Canadians.

Along the way, James endured a torrent of racial slurs and taunts from fans in Canada and the United States. Ina met Val late in his career, and he never told her about any of the disturbing events in the book’s early chapters.