Box Socials
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
"A whimsical portrait of 1940s-era small-town life, crowded with everything from owl-calling contests to raucous, five-day Ukrainian weddings…delightful."—Los Angeles Times
This is the story of how Truckbox Al McClintock, a small-town greaser whose claim to fame was hitting a baseball clean across the Pembina River, almost got a tryout with the genuine St. Louis Cardinals—but instead ended up batting against Bob Feller of Cleveland Indian fame in Renfrew Park, Edmonton, Alberta. Along the way to Al's moment of truth at the plate, we learn about the bizarre, touchingly hilarious lives and loves of just about anyone who ever passed through New Oslo, Fark, or Venusberg. Full of the crackle of down-home folk tales, by turns randy, riveting, and heartbreaking, Box Socials is a triumph.
"Wonderful…Charming and funny…If you've never been to a box social, go to this one."—Fannie Flagg, The New York Times Book Review
"Kinsella, whose classic Shoeless Joe found another incarnation in the movie Field of Dreams, evokes the atmosphere of small-town ball fields and other aspects of rural life in this colorful, comic reminiscence of multi-ethnic farm society in Depression-era Canada."—Publishers Weekly
"A story filled with nostalgia about a time when the game was played on real grass and was called on account of darkness."—The New York Times
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Kinsella, whose classic Shoeless Joe found another incarnation in the movie Field of Dreams , evokes the atmosphere of small-town ball fields and other aspects of rural life in this colorful, comic reminiscence of multi-ethnic farm society in Depression-era Canada. Purporting to tell ``the story of how Truckbox Al McClintock almost got a tryout with the genuine St. Louis Cardinals of the National Baseball League,'' narrator Jamie O'Day leads the reader on a rambling tour of the rural Alberta hamlets near which he and Truckbox grew up, the closest being a town called Fark. Inheriting storytelling talent from his father, a transplanted South Carolina carpenter whom he often quotes, Jamie also passes along insights picked up while eavesdropping on the gossip meetings of the ``Fark Female Farmerettes.'' With humor and tenderness Kinsella evokes the social rites of the Norwegian-, German-, Ukrainian- and English-speaking hillbillies, their courtships and heartbreaks, fistfights and philanderings, through a series of weddings, dances, whist drives and box socials. Jamie's teenage memories poke gentle fun at small-town society and at adulthood itself while still celebrating his coming-of-age--the real story here, despite Truckbox McClintock's brush with athletic fame.
