Home, Away

Baseball fans, do I have a book for you! Jeff Gillenkirk’s Home, Away is one of the best baseball novels I have ever read - and I have read a bunch of them. (I enjoyed this book so much that I actually used an exclamation point at the end of my first sentence, something I swore I would never do.) I realize that not everyone out there is a sports fan and that baseball-based novels do not appeal to every reader, but this is more than a sports novel. It is also one of the better love stories I have read in a while, although in this case, it is a story about the love a father has for his only son.

Jason Thibodeaux never really knew his own father, an offshore oil rig worker who was killed in a European rig explosion. Long before his sudden death, Jason’s father would disappear for months at a time, leaving the boy to grow up as if he had no father of his own. Jason, though, shared a love of baseball with his wandering father and he inherited great physical skills from the man. He also decided that he would never neglect his own children the way his father had neglected him. What Jason Thibodeaux never expected, however, was that he would have a son of his own by the time he turned twenty-one.

A star baseball player at Stanford University, and on the brink of a professional career, Jason has a one-night stand with a Stanford law student that leaves her pregnant with his son, Raphael (Rafe). Jason puts his senior season on hold so that he can care for the baby while Vicki completes law school and prepares for the bar exam. Then, just when he is ready to return to baseball, he discovers that his marriage is over and that Vicki is leaving him - and taking Rafe with her. Jason and Vicki will spend the next several years battling over their son, distracting Jason from his baseball career and earning him the reputation among baseball people as a “head case,” a player best avoided.

Through it all, though, Jason’s love for his son never wavers and, with Rafe’s best interests always in mind, he makes the toughest choices imaginable, including one that will see him walk away from a multi-year professional baseball contract worth more than $40 million. Rafe needs a father – and Jason is determined to be there for him.

Home, Away offers a bleak look at what happens to a family when divorce gets ugly because both parents believe only they can offer their children the best future. Jason and Vicki will spend years viciously fighting each other over their son and, of course, no one will suffer more from their fighting than the boy they both claim to love best. It is only when Rafe is on the brink of completely ruining his life that his parents will finally admit to themselves that it will take both of them to save him.

But the best part of Home, Away is the baseball insider’s look it presents of the game as Jason makes his way through several different major league teams. Gillenkirk’s game descriptions are first rate, and his insights into the war between pitcher and batter place the reader inside the heads of both. Particularly enjoyable are the segments taking place in Mexico, a country within which Jason manages to create the surrogate family that will help keep him sane during his darkest hours.

Baseball fans are certain to find themselves enthralled by the last forty or so pages of the book, and love story fans will likely feel the same about the books final three. Do not miss this one.

Rated at: 5.0

(Review Copy provided by Publisher)

Kagan Is OK with Law Banning Books - Because It Will Never Happen Anyway

Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan has the gall to argue that a law allowing governmental book banning is OK because "it would never be applied" anyway. Is this woman actually that naive? Is Kagan the best we can come up with for another lifetime appointment to the most important bench in the country?

You tell me:




Kagan places the burden on us to challenge any federal book banning. This woman is dangerously naive - or dangerously stupid. Listen to the sitting Supreme Court justices respond in horror to what this she is saying in her argument before that court.

"This statute covers it, but don't worry, the FEC has never done it." Oh, now I feel much better, Ms. Kagan...ridiculous.

Far Cry

It is often said there is no greater pain than that stemming from the loss of a child. When such a loss is compounded by the uncertainty of that child’s fate, the emotional pain suffered by those left behind is so great that their own survival is threatened. Marriages often fail, emotional breakdowns are common, and some parents, believing there is no longer anything to live for, take their own lives. This is the territory visited in Far Cry, John Harvey’s latest story featuring DI Will Grayson and his sometime partner, DS Helen Walker.

Detective Grayson is not happy to hear that Mitchell Roberts, a creepy pedophile he helped bring to justice, is being given an early release from prison. Grayson becomes so obsessive about his determination to protect his community from Roberts that he is willing to place his own future in jeopardy in order to keep Roberts from offending again. Despite his borderline tactics, including public humiliation, harassment, and physical contact, Grayson soon learns, however, that Mitchell Roberts will not be intimidated so easily. But when a young girl goes missing, and Grayson is put in charge of the investigation, he knows exactly where he wants to start.

It is 1995. Simon and Ruth Pierce, off on a mini-vacation to France after having reluctantly agreed to let their daughter accompany another family on holiday to Cornwall, receive a phone call telling them that she has gone missing there on a freakishly foggy evening. The Pierces will never see their daughter alive again.

Flash forward to the present. The Pierce marriage has not survived the tragedy of Heather’s death but Ruth is remarried and she and her second husband are raising their own young daughter, Beatrice. Simon, as far as Ruth knows, lives alone and has managed to piece together a new life for himself, however lonely that life might be. Astonishingly, Beatrice has now gone missing and Detective Grayson wonders what the odds against one woman losing both of her daughters to human predators, more than a decade apart, must be.

Far Cry is a nicely crafted police procedural but its real strength springs from the characters with which John Harvey has peopled his story. Harvey’s two investigators are not typical of popular detective fiction and, in fact, seem to share roles exactly opposite what most readers by now will have come to expect from the genre. Will Grayson has a good marriage and he looks forward to returning to his two children and their mother at the end of the workday. Helen Walker, on the other hand, plays the role of the loner prone to too much drinking and shaky decisions regarding her choice of sexual partners. Helen’s willingness to get involved with married men and to enjoy the occasional one - night stand leaves Will cold and he worries about her.

Ruth Pierce is a well developed character whose struggle to maintain her sanity can be disturbing to watch. She is a woman with secrets, particularly the fact that she often sees and speaks with the spirit of her oldest daughter. Ruth believes that neither of her husbands can possibly feel the loss of her children as deeply as she does and she keeps her emotional life largely hidden from them. Already struggling to maintain the semblance of a normal life, the loss of her second daughter moves her dangerously close to a mental state from which she might never recover.

Far Cry will naturally appeal to fans of John Harvey’s Charlie Resnick series but, because of the sensitive way it explores the nature of loss, it will work equally well for readers with little previous exposure to detective fiction.

Rated at: 5.0

(Review Copy provided by Publisher)

ROMP 2010 - Final Day

It's already after midnight here in Owensboro and I still have to pack up for an early exit in the morning so there won't be much in the way of detail, photos, or video until I make it back to Houston on Monday morning.

Yellow Creek Park was a little warmer than the day before - and the humidity had to be a lot higher today - so, bands, and fans alike, had to struggle a bit out there. The stage was still a hot, hot place to work according to Mike Snider (whose show did not end until about ten p.m. ) but the bands all did remarkable jobs up there. More later.

This band was intriguing:



Although one member is an American, this bluegrass band calls Hungary home. It was, I think, their first ever appearance in this country and they seemed totally thrilled to be in Kentucky, so close to Rosine, the official birthplace of bluegrass music (Owensboro is about 30 miles from Rosine). They played a little Hungarian music at one point - although the song they played sounded very Celtic or Irish to my ears.

ROMP Photos - Day 3

I am running late this morning but I want to share a handful of photos I took yesterday at Yellow Creek Park during this year's ROMP event. It was markedly "cooler" yesterday than it had been the day before and it really cooled off nicely as the sun went down. The real blessing, though, in addition to the lower humidity, was the absolutely top notch bluegrass music that I heard for about thirteen hours.

Yesterday's bands included Steel String Session, Jack Hicks & Summertown Road, Stringtown, Twenty-Three String Band, The Professors of Bluegrass, New Appleseed Band (Japan), Michael Cleveland & The Flamekeeper Band, Claire Lynch Band, Josh Williams Band, Dailey & Vincent, and G2 Bluegrass Band (Sweden). I have to tell you, though, folks that Dailey & Vincent stole the show, as usual. These guys just get better and better and I doubt there is a more entertaining band in any kind of music.

I'll start with a picture of a portion of the Steel String Session and will follow with photos of Summertown Road, The Professors of Bluegrass, New Appleseed Band, Michael Cleveland & Flamekeeper, Claire Lynch Band, Josh Williams Band and Dailey & Vincent, in that order:













I also sat in on Michael Cleveland's fiddle workshop yesterday afternoon (even though I don't play a lick):

ROMP 2010 - Day 2

(Photo: RBI Radio interviews former Bluegrass Boys - including Tom Gray, Bluegrass Boy for 2 days)


Even while enjoying all the great bluegrass music in Owensboro this week, a guy has to eat. And yesterday I received unexpected treats at both lunch and dinner.

I walked a couple of blocks from the International Bluegrass Music Museum to a little Greek restaurant that does great lunchtime business. It was so crowded, in fact, that the only way I could get a seat was to share a table with a couple who walked in the door behind me (two Kentuckians in town on other business). About ten minutes after we sat down, the door opened and in walked Hisashi Ozaki and four people who traveled with him from Japan to Owensboro for ROMP 2010. Since our table was large enough to seat an additional five people, I invited Mr. Ozaki and his group to join us - and they graciously accepted the invitation. Ozaki is well known in bluegrass circles as the co-founder of the very first bluegrass band in Japan and he will display his mandolin skills later today when he sits in for a song or two with New Appleseed Band, a Japanese bluegrass band whose performance I am looking forward to enjoying.

That was the beginning of a full hour of conversation about bluegrass and country music in Japan, an hour during which I confirmed that lovers of real country music are the same all over the world. Takao Nakanishi, Secretary General of the Kamakura Opry, and Tetsuo Otsuka, disc jockey and President of the same Opry, were quick to remark that what's passing for country music today (whether it's called New Country, Young Country, or some other marketing lie) is definitely not country music. It was nice to see that the CMA is fooling no one these days; not even people on the other side of the world can be convinced that New Country is real country music.

During a break between sets, I stumbled upon Eddie and Martha Adcock sitting on a bench in the hallway and had a nice conversation with Eddie about the interest that Japanese television has in the complex brain surgery that allowed him to regain his picking skills. Eddie is looking good (he remarked that he has more hair on his head than when I saw him last year) and he says he is feeling very well. I spoke with Martha, in some detail, about the state of the recording industry today and how the digital music revolution is impacting the average indie artist out there. Martha has some interesting insights into what is happening to record labels and whether or not the internet is making it easier or more difficult for new artists to break into the business - and for established ones to find new listeners. According to Martha, it is up to the artist now; no more big brother to take care of all the marketing details. The Adcoks, as always, are two of the nicest people in town this week - and that says a lot when Owensboro is filled with friendly people wanting to do nothing more than share the music.

Dinner at RiverPark Center at a table filled with four of Bill Monroe's former Bluegrass Boys was the perfect way to end the day - but there would still be sets from The Whites and Doc Watson, plus a recognition ceremony honoring about 70 bluegrass legends and Bluegrass Boys. At my table were Yates Green (Bluegrass Boy in 1956), Ernie Graves (1957), Bill Keith (1963) and Doug Hutchens (1971). It was fun to hear their stories about life on the road with Monroe, especially the stories about the four-hour shifts they had to put in behind the wheel getting the band from show-to-show, and some of the practical jokes the guys played on each other. The nice thing is that ROMPs are like big reunions for these guys and they seem to be having as much fun here as the rest of us.

I also spent some time with Steve Leatherwood of WGWG radio who hosts a three-hour bluegrass show on the station every Wednesday night with the help of his son Jeremy. Talking music (and small town life) with Steve was the perfect segue into the great music that ended day two of ROMP 2010. You can listen to WGWG here.

And there are two days yet to go. Gotta run.