If I Never Get Back
A Novel
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4.8 • 4 Ratings
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
Time travel meets baseball in this “grand adventure” about a modern-day reporter who witnesses the birth of America’s favorite pastime (The Washington Times)
Contemporary reporter Sam Fowler is stuck in a dull job and a failing marriage when he is suddenly transported back to the summer of 1869. After a wrenching period of adjustment, he feels rejuvenated by his involvement with the nation’s first pro baseball team, the Cincinnati Red Stockings. But American sports isn't the only thing to undergo a major transformation—Sam himself starts to change as he faces life-threatening 19th-century challenges on and off the baseball diamond. With the support of his fellow ballplayers and the lovely Caitlin O'Neill, will he regain the sense of family he desperately needs?
Darryl Brock masterfully evokes post-Civil War America—its smoky cities and transcontinental railroad, its dance halls and parlour houses, its financial booms and busts. Equally appealing to sports fans and anyone who appreciates a well-told story, If I Never Get Back is a literary home run that "grabs you from line one on page one and never lets go" (San Francisco Chronicle).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This highly entertaining, inherently cinematic debut blends two genres, the baseball story and the time-travel fantasy, that have been more at home on screen than on the page. The author wastes no time in establishing (or explaining) his premise; mere pages into the first chapter, Sam Fowler, a discontented journalist whose family life has disintegrated, steps off Amtrak and into 1869. Before he can get his bearings, he's a member of the Cincinnati Red Stockings, witnessing baseball in its infancy with an unbeatable team. Brock steeps his story in period detail, from the smell of kerosene in a railroad car to a daring ``leg show'' in old New York, and devotes long passages to early baseball lore, with play-by-play descriptions that will test the patience of non-fans. As well, he doesn't stint on the anachronistic details that always spark this kind of story: along the way, his hero invents ballpark hotdogs, the scoreboard, ``Red River Valley'' and the bunt. Throw in a century-spanning romance, nefarious gamblers and a cameo by Mark Twain, and the result is a winning fable about dreaming away reality that is both hokey and irresistible. 50,000 first printing; $40,000 ad/promo.
