A well-developed baseball novel with a feel-good ending.
Dossetto’s novel adds a few twists to a familiar plot: a ragtag minor league baseball team with an over-the-hill manager struggles for one last shot at glory.
Harold “Skip” Freeman, a former World Series champion with the Detroit Tigers, now manages the Toledo Mud Hens in the Tigers’ minor league system. He’d been mistreated as a manager in the majors, but he loved the game enough to keep working. That love has since evaporated, however. At the beginning of this story, a pitcher named Rick, who once played for Freeman in the majors, gives the manager a wake-up call, asking him why he’s coasting through the current season. Freeman immediately starts making changes by coaching up a couple of players, including first baseman Andre and an outfielder nicknamed “Latin Lover,” and bringing in a new outfielder prospect named Alex Casillas. During this time, however, Freeman also decides that he wants to retire at the end of the season to spend more time with his wife, Gail. Things start to pick up for the Mud Hens, and the pressure mounts on Freeman to continue his success. Along the way, there are a few amusing subplots: a young woman, Amber, starts out as a kind of baseball groupie, but gains confidence when she finds love with one of the players, and a pitcher, Dirk, gets into some gambling trouble, which leads to a fight scene with a truly hilarious conclusion. Ultimately, Freeman’s success has more to do with how his players end up, especially after they’ve moved on. Although Dossetto tries to avoid a clichéd movie-style ending, the action does follow a tried-and-true trajectory of personal and professional triumphs. However, Amber accomplishes most of her personal growth out of sight, and only comes back into the spotlight near the end, fully formed. The author tells the story from Freeman’s perspective, and he makes outdated pop-culture references that distract from the story more than they add color to his character. At one point, Freeman compares a situation with the ending of the 1996 Kevin Costner film Tin Cup—a reference that most readers may struggle to remember. Also, those who aren’t well-versed in baseball might find the action hard to follow at times. Dossetto makes up for that, though, with a collection of charming characters that are easy to root for, and enough diversions to keep things engaging.
A well-developed baseball novel with a feel-good ending.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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