Magic Time

Matt Hartman is a freelance editor and cataloguer, running Hartman Cataloguing, Editing and Indexing Services.

Kinsella and baseball have been pretty much a team since the 1982
publication of Shoeless Joe and its subsequent cinematic incarnation as
Field of Dreams. Magic Time is the story of young Chicagoan and Major
League hopeful Mike Houle, who finds himself playing second base for the
Grand Mound Greenshirts in the semi-pro Iowa Cornbelt League. Houle,
like his teammates, is billeted with one of the local families at the
beginning of what soon threatens to become the longest spring training
season on record. When it finally dawns on him that there is to be no
season, just practice games, Houle goes searching for the real reasons
he was recruited and signed for Grand Mound. By the time he discovers
the truth, he is involved with his host’s daughter, and extricating
himself from both the team and his love life requires something more
than he is able to muster readily.

Though Magic Time is not in the same league as Shoeless Joe, it
contains enough whimsy, warmth and, yes, baseball, to make it a
necessary acquisition for public and school libraries.