Title: The PitcherAuthor: William Hazelgrove
About the book: A boy with a golden arm but no money for lessons. A mother who wants to give her son his dream before she dies. A broken down World Series pitcher who cannot go on after the death of his wife. These are the elements of The Pitcher. A story of a man at the end of his dream and a boy whose dream is to make his high school baseball team. In the tradition of The Natural and The Field of Dreams, this is a mythic story about how a man and a boy meet in the crossroads of their life and find a way to go on. You will laugh and you will cry as The Pitcher and Ricky prepare for the ultimate try out of life.
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My Thoughts: This is one of the best books that I have read in quite awhile. Touching in its simplicity, yet full of emotion. A boy's love for baseball; a mother's love for her son; a man's love for his deceased wife. These all fill the story with meaning and bring about the choices each makes. Choices that intertwine their lives with unbreakable bonds.
I love the way the author drew me into the lives of Ricky and his mother Maria. You feel Maria's struggle of trying to raise her boy as a single mom with an ex who shows up to steal from them and abuse them. To add to her struggles, she has lupus and has lost her health insurance so refuses to go back to the doctor until she can pay the thousands in bills that she has racked up. Ricky has struggles of his own. Dyslexia has dogged him in school as has his Mexican heritage. "Beano" and "Wetback" are names he hears often on and off the baseball field.
Together they convince, entice, coerce their next door neighbor into coaching Ricky with his pitching. This neighbor just happens to be an old MLB pitcher who won a World Series in the 1970's. He has been living in his garage for years, drinking Good Times beer, chewing Skoal and watching baseball on TV. His life basically ended when his wife died. He has been unable to move forward and has accepted his existence as a washed-up, drunk ex-MLB Pitcher.
Apart, their lives are stagnant, but together, they combine into a sometimes chaotic, sometimes heartbreaking, but altogether joyful life.
~I received a complimentary ecopy of The Pitcher from Kathy at Book Blasts and Blog Tours in exchange for my unbiased review.~
About the author: William Hazelgrove is the best selling author of five novels, Ripples, Tobacco Sticks Mica Highways and Rocket Man and The Pitcher His books have received starred reviews in Publisher Weekly, Book of the Month Selections, Junior Library Guild Selections, ALA Editors Choice Awards and optioned for the movies. He was the Ernest Hemingway Writer in Residence where he wrote in the attic of Ernest Hemingway’s birthplace. He has written articles and reviews for USA Today and other publications. His latest novel Rocket Man due out May 1, 2013 was chosen Book of the Year by Books and Authors.net. He runs a political cultural blog, The View From Hemingway’s Attic. A forthcoming novel, The Pitcher will be out Sept 1, 2013. He lives in Chicago.
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Ends 10/27/11
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