Hard Hit — Ann Turner

As she did in her groundbreaking memoir, Learning to Swim, Turner takes on a tough subject through luminous poetry. The result is a shattering and healing journey through one boy's loss of a parent.

As the pitcher on his HS team, Mark lives and breathes baseball. Sure, there's pressure from his coach and his dad, who both push him hard, but it's nothing that time with his buddy, Eddie, or with his crush, Diane, can't diffuse. But all that changes when Mark's dad is diagnosed with cancer, and everything Mark has ever believed in--love, God, and baseball--is called into question.

This profoundly affecting novel in verse traces the physical and emotional journey of a boy in crisis, and all the requisite emotions--anger, denial, fear, bargaining, sadness, & acceptance--that accompany loss.