If I Never Get Back: A Novel

(Paperback)

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Description

A modern-day alienated man, Sam Fowler - stuck in a dead-end job, his life and marriage in disarray - abruptly finds himself transported back in time to the summer of 1869. After a wrenching period of adjustment, he finds himself rejuvenated by his involvement with the nation's first pro baseball players. He also finds himself responding to a time that seems more vital, his senses and tastes quickening as he deals with life-threatening 19th-century challenges on and off the baseball diamond. Through his attachments to the players and to a lovely woman, Caitlin O'Neill, who he seemed predestined to meet, he regains a sense of family that he desperately needs. With Sam, we voyage across post-Civil War America, visiting its smoky, turbulent cities; riding the new transcontinental over prairies and mountains to California; going to dance halls and parlour houses; witnessing financial booms and busts, and meeting notable personalities such as Mark Twain, Ulysses Grant and Jesse James. Small wonder that when Sam is thrust back, involuntarily, into modern times, he yearns to return to the world of 1869.

Reviews

A rawhide odyssey meticulously historical. By now the reader is asking And then And then like a child listening to a storyteller.Time Grabs you from line one on page one and never lets go. Enchanting. San Francisco Chronicle An engrossing, even charming tale. By its final inning, the reader is sad to see it end. The New York Times Book ReviewA grand adventure and joyful embrace of baseball the way it ought to be played If I Never Get Back should be required reading for players and owners as well as fans.The Washington Times

Author Bio

For the better part of two decades, Darryl Brock was a history, English, and psychology instructor in San Francisco Bay Area high schools. He holds a BA from the University of Redlands and has many graduate units in history at UC Berkeley. He has served as a writing consultant to the State of California and worked with Educational Testing Service to establish essay-scoring programs. Since 1984, Brock has been a full-time freelance writer, and is the author of numerous articles and reviews, many of them about early baseball and/or Mark Twain.He is an accomplished public speaker on the subjects of the Red Stockings, early baseball in general, and his experience in researching those pioneer pros. He is heavily involved in the world of baseball, attending Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) regional meetings and occasionally national conventions, as well as other baseball organizations' functions.Darryl Brock lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife and daughter.