Kirkus Review
Young, struggling Iowa farmer Ray Kinsella hears a disembodied order to build, among his corn, a baseball field in which the dead and ghostly can redeem themselves--and, though too poor to meet his mortgage payments, Ray is deeply in love with the nectarous myth of baseball: he builds the field. So, sure enough, Shoeless Joe Jackson of 1919 Black-Sox-scandal infamy (""Say it ain't so, Joe!"") appears as a ghost, eventually bringing his dead teammates with him; and together they play night-games under a single stalk of lights while Ray and his wife and daughter (who can all see them) raptly watch from jerry-built outfield bleachers. Furthermore, Ray then hears a summons to ""ease his pain""--and he somehow knows that this refers to writer J. D. Salinger! Thus, Ray drives to New Hampshire for Salinger, abducting the hermit novelist: they head back West, stopping along the way in Minnesota to talk with the ghost of ""Moonlight"" Graham, a 1906 New York Giants player-turned-small-town-doctor; and then Ray brings Salinger home to Iowa so that he too, like Ray, can be a sort of Dorothy, with baseball a benevolent, ghostly, neverending Oz. A sweet, imaginative fantasy--but, unfortunately, one doesn't need to know this first novel's publishing history to recognize it as a short-story that's been fatally overextended. The Peter-Pan-ish theme wears thin, drifting from goodheartedness into simplemindedness; the Salinger-kidnap idea starts as a nice fillip, then becomes a distracting loose end; the only plot-hook--the efforts of agri-businessmen to take Ray's farm and destroy his ballfield--isn't anchored securely. So finally, though winning in its messy, sentimental love-of-baseball and studded with limpid, lovely scenes, the narrative here doesn't hang together as a novel. And Kinsella registers instead as a promising story-writer, with rich potential, perhaps, in the vein of a gentler, more sweet-natured Max Apple. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Kinsella's lighthearted fantasy pairs reclusive author J. D. Salinger with an Iowa baseball fanatic who has built an authentic baseball field on his farm property for Shoeless Joe Jackson and other baseball immortals. (Mr 15 82 Adult)
