Long Gone — Paul Hemphill

A story with a heart of gold about love and the loss of innocence at the bottom of the most minor league in baseball the class D Alabama-Florida League in the 1950s, with a sour old maverick manager, a yearning teenage second baseman, and a black catcher masquerading as a Venezuelan. "A first-rate novel. Newsweek. "A sharp, unsentimental portrait of the minor league life...and Hemphill makes it all come to life, believably and memorably. Sports Illustrated. "So good, so true, so funny... New York Times Book Review."