Battle Creek - by Scott Lasser (Paperback)

About the Book

While struggling with his dying father and estranged son, the coach of an amateur baseball team pins his hopes for a championship season on a rookie hitter who wanders into town, fresh from prison. The events that unfold are unexpected and overwhelmingly powerful--and will change the men's lives forever.

Book Synopsis

Gil Davison is the coach of an amateur baseball team in Michigan, national finalists many times over but champions never. He has spent his adult life juggling his roles as coach to the team, father to his estranged son who has made it clear he is doing just fine without Gil, and caretaker to his disapproving father who is dying of cancer. So when a hot rookie hitter wanders into town--fresh from a stint in prison--Gil convinces himself that this season his team must win the championship, their last chance to fulfill an elusive dream. But the events that unfold are unexpected, enlightening, and overwhelmingly powerful--and will change each of these men forever.

Review Quotes

"A powerful novel of thwarted lives...the narrative, with its poignant and disturbing insights into father-son relationships aand its acceptance of the frailty of the human condition is completely engrossing."-- "Publishers Weekly""Battle Creek is distinguished by Lasser's ability to write about the game with neither myth nor sentimentality. He captures the game's interludes, its breaths and caesuras, with subtlety and grace."-- "Newsday"A first novel by a Lehman Brothers trader named Scott Lasser may be, in its quiet way, perhaps the most absorbing book to be published this may...Lasser has managed to capture the profound dignity in these ordinary lives and the poetry of a baseball season unsullied by the promise of big money or celebrity. And in the end, within this macho world of reticent action men, this is a novel that turns out to be all about love." -- "Baltimore Sun"Lasser's prose is spare and precise, but the characters he writes about--greenhorns and aging athletes, fathers and sons--are most eloquent in their silence."--"The New Yorker"One warm, compelling, heart-wrenching, fascinating story...Mr. Lasser's truest strength is an unassuming genius for characterization."--"Austin Chronicle"Lasser's novel offers...snapshots of players throwing and hitting perfectly, moments that remain in memory, expanding into timelessness."--Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, "New York Times