A fresh, heartfelt take on the American dream and the golden era of the national pastime.
The Burcats’ historical novel follows the exploits of a rabid Phillies fan and aspiring novelist.
In the rough-and-tumble Philadelphia of the mid-1930s, young Benjamin Green is a normal kid whose daydreams of big-league baseball play out on the dusty sandlots of his South Philly neighborhood. At the novel’s opening, Ben is on the mound with his dad watching from home plate, and even though Ben gives up the game-winning hit, his father still surprises him with the best gift Ben could imagine: tickets to the Phillies double-header that day against the infamous Brooklyn Dodgers. Tragically, Ben’s father is killed in a car accident shortly thereafter. The story jumps ahead 15 years to 1950; readers find Ben out of the Navy and married to Debby, a sweet hometown girl pregnant with their first child. They live with Debby’s parents while she works a day job and Ben studies English literature at the University of Pennsylvania. Though Ben dreams of becoming a celebrated novelist—his first manuscript is woven throughout these pages—he is torn between following his dream and more practical concerns. His buddy from college and the Navy, Stan, comes from a fabulously wealthy family who owns an ad agency at which Stan plans to work and where he thinks he can get Ben a job, too. “Look man,” Stan tells Ben, “you need a paying job. Debby’s pregnant, remember? Do you want to be a part-time elevator operator for the rest of your life?” Though the offer is enticing, Ben would have to hide a fundamental part of himself: his Jewish identity. As Ben navigates these competing desires to build a life, his journey is effectively juxtaposed with the rise of the 1950 Phillies squad, the eponymously nicknamed “Whiz Kids.” Father-and-son writing team Joel and the late David Burcat have crafted a novel rich with Philadelphia history and a heavy dose of baseball. Fresh literary ground may not have been broken here, and readers not familiar with the game may not connect as strongly with this work, but baseball fans are sure to hang through to the final out.
A fresh, heartfelt take on the American dream and the golden era of the national pastime.Pub Date: July 1, 2025
ISBN: 9798888193297
Page Count: 281
Publisher: Milford House Press
Review Posted Online: May 21, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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