Though the all-star game of July 11 has passed, baseball fans still looking for a summer read might consider Douglas Bauer’s most recent novel: The Beckoning World (University of Iowa Press, 2022).
This Iowa-set novel tells the story of Earl Dunham, a protagonist facing a crossroad — to chase the dream of baseball, or to give in to love and the pull of practical choices. It’s a familiar conflict, but Bauer weaves it into a rich portrayal of the time period with a grasp of midwestern sensibilities, deft turns of phrase and descriptions of baseball action that are a pleasure to read.
The story starts as a teenage Earl is setting out to follow his dream of playing professional baseball. There isn’t much to hold him back, only work in a southeast Iowa coal mine and an abusive father who “hated the whole of life with an appetite that thrilled him.” After a scout signs Earl to pitch for the Waterloo Loons, Earl meets Emily Marchand, and the two fall in love. Then comes the choice. Should he stay on the road with the team or be with Emily, start a family, work the farm in Hinton, Iowa and fall into the routine of “fine day-to-dayness”?
As Yogi Berra put it, “Love is the most important thing in the world, but baseball is pretty good, too.”
The story spans from 1914 to 1927 during which the larger forces of a world war and an influenza epidemic bear down on the country. Yet there is still the thrill of baseball. Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth enter the story as they pass through Sioux City on a barnstorming tour. By this time, Earl has a 10-year-old son, Henry, and the two of them are caught up in the swirl around the two luminaries setting off sparks around Earl and his love of the game.
Raised in rural Iowa, Bauer captures the particulars of Iowa’s Midwestern ethos when he describes the farm and small-town orbit inhabited by young Henry as a “radius of richly isolated life.” Bauer is the author of three other novels and three nonfiction works including the essay collection What Happens Next? for which he won the 2014 PEN/New England Book Award in Non-Fiction.
In The Beckoning World, Bauer is at his best when describing the hum of the crowds and the tension of plays on the field—the high-fly ball soaring toward the outfield and the dogged fielder racing to catch it or Earl’s surge of emotion when Lou Gehrig hits a home run during an exhibition game. As he watches the ball leave the park, he thinks, “It could be an exhibition, it could be the World Series, it could be neighbors in a pasture with grain sacks for bases, it would feel just as good.”
This article was originally published in Little Village’s August 2023 issue.