Author(s): Pete Dexter

General Fiction

This title comes from one of America's finest living writers, Pete Dexter, US National Book Award-winning author of "Paris Trout". This is a riotous and dazzling comic story of resilience and love, for fans of John Irving and Jonathan Franzen. Warren Spooner is born in rural Georgia, on the first Sunday of December 1956, after a prolonged and unhappy labour in a makeshift delivery room. His troubled birth is swiftly followed by his father's untimely death - and young Spooner is left to get on with growing up, without even a memory of his daddy's face. Spooner makes it into minor league baseball, but an injury to his throwing arm relegates him to the sidelines, and dashes his hopes of making it to the big-time. But the young man is nothing if not resilient, standing up to tragedy and adversity in his own dark (often extremely dark) ways. Through it all his step-father - Calmer Ottoson - stands by, determinedly trying to save his step-son, yet utterly powerless to do so.