By: Howard Frank MosherMixing a little fantasy with a coming-of-age saga and a healthy dose of the New England tall tale, Mosher spins a charming baseball yarn... Ethan "E. A." Allen is a home-schooled teenage baseball phenom from Kingdom County, Vermont. Raised by his mom, a country-singing hooker, and his grandma, a foulmouthed curmudgeon who has been wheelchair-bound since Bucky Dent's game-winning homer in the 1978 Yankees-Red Sox playoff, E. A. is a loner whose best friend is a statue of his namesake, which overlooks Kingdom County's scaled-down version of Fenway Park. Then a stranger named Teddy comes to town, and E. A. has the real-life mentor he needs (and the Red Sox may have a savior). Mosher is a master at combining sweet and sour: his baseball story stirs W. P. Kinsella fantasy with Mark Harris realism, while his view of small-town New England leavens the grit of Annie Proulx or Carolyn Chute with just the right amount of Mosher's own down-to-earth sweetness.
Copyright 2004 Booklist Reviews.
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