Hanging Curve — Troy Soos

Spring, 1922. Jazz is hot. Baseball is hotter--and bitterly segregated. As a major league infielder, Mickey Rawlings has always wanted a chance to match his skills against the very best in the game, black and white. When he gets a chance to play against the East St. Louis Cubs, a black semi-pro team, Mickey willingly risks his career to step across baseball's color line. He soon finds that more than a game is at stake--and more than his career is at risk--when one of the Negro League stars is hanged in the ballpark, the victim of a brutal lynching.

As tensions mount in an already divided city, Mickey investigates the murder and sees sides of America that he's never encountered before. While discovering the rich culture of 1920s black society, he also finds destructive forces working their way into the country's mainstream. He is soon in a world where shocking violence and corruption are everyday fare, and justice is hard to find as Mickey enters the most important--and dangerous--game of his life...