SOUR APPLES

After the summer of 1975, life will never be the same for Jimmy, a small-town boy, in this YA novel.

It’s the 1970s in Walnut Creek, in an unnamed U.S. state, long before cellphones and social media, and preteen Jimmy Hamilton daydreams about big league baseball, throws crab apples at the neighbor’s cat, and hopes his mom doesn’t order him to tear down his tree fort. On the plus side, summer and Little League are about to start. If only his mother wouldn’t drag him to the library every week. (Jimmy’s dim view of libraries is a frequent reminder of the book’s subtitle: “for those who hate to read.”) When an accident occurs on his 11th birthday, Jimmy’s summer takes a disappointing turn. In this uneasy mix of small-town Americana (baseball, church, home-baked cookies, playing catch in the backyard with Dad) and coming-of-age angst (angry outbursts, verbal obscenities, a first crush, upturned friendships), Jimmy plans to prove himself on the pitcher’s mound and to keep invading girls and rowdy teens out of his new fort in the woods. The latter intention leads to the novel’s sobering conclusion, involving a shunned homeless man with baseball skills. The book shines brightest in its depictions of baseball through Jimmy’s eyes. At night, the cornfield is “silhouetted against the outfield fence….The magic of the game filled the bleachers,” and the “Bermuda grass was crisp under their spikes.” Less magical is the boys’ oblivious, laughing cruelty; for example, Jimmy disembowels a living snake and pokes a knife into the three-legged frog the snake had consumed. The boys compare the frog to “that cripple with just the one arm who sits in his wheelchair out in front of the grocery store.” Jimmy’s nascent hormonal confusion rings true, however, and there’s heart in the book’s depictions of his caring mom, a girl with empathy and “chocolate eyes,” and the epiphanic ending.

A realistic, visceral portrayal of a boy’s coming-of-age.