is a wonderful book about realistic people and their extended circle of friends, lovers, and business associates, Moves very quickly, great vacation reading, Looking forward to the authors other books, Hes in a similar vein to John Ed Bradley and Richard Russo, If you like their stuff you will like this one, September. Dancer Stonemason is three days away from his major league debut with the St, Louis Cardinals. With his wife and son cheering him on, he pitches the greatest game of his life, And then he loses everything,
Told against the backdrop of Americas postwar challenges from Little Rock to the Bay of Pigs to Viet Nam, AMERICAN PAST TIME is the story of what happens to a man and his family after the cheering stops.
I really liked the beginning of the novel and all its possibilities by the end, I was disappointed with how the author tried to "make" the story work.
American Past Time is a sweeping novel that spans two decades in the life of one southern family, It begins inwith the pivotal moment in the storyDancer Stonemason, one step away from making the Major Leagues, is pitching in what should be his final minor league gamehes due to pitch for the St.
Louis Cardinals in three days, So, he should limit his amount of pitches and not stay in the game too long, and save himself for the big club.
Of course, fate has a twisted sense of humor: Dancer is pitching a perfect game, Hes determined to go the distance, even if that jeopardizes his chance at starting for the Cards,
Dancers plan was to support his young family wife, one son, another on the way as a big league pitcher.
But, as John Lennon sang, life is what happens to us while were busy making other plans, The injury that results from pitching too long in the perfect game alters the course of his life, The real world intrudes on his dream and throws yet another curve ball at himan accident at the foundry where he winds up working squashes any hope of reviving his baseball career.
Dancer is in a downward spiral at this point he cant help himself in fact, he makes things worse and his wife Dede cant do much for him either.
His eldest son, Clayton, who once idolized Dancer, now feels let down by him, Hes lost all respect for his father, Jimmy, the youngest in the family, is more forgiving and loves his father of course he wasnt around for the highlight of the Stonemason familythe perfect game.
He didnt witness the downfall of Dancer, so he accepts Dancer for who he is without disappointment clouding his emotions.
In this way, Jimmy is the moral compass of the story, It takes the rest of the family years to forgive Dancer for being human,
The time frame of this novelis not only significant to the Stonemason family, but to the nation as well.
The author, Len Joy, does an excellent job switching POVs to show how the Civil Rights movement affects Dede, the growth of suburbia affects Jimmy and Dancer, and the Viet Nam War affects Clayton.
Ultimately, though, the Stonemasons tale is one of regret, forgiveness, and finally, redemption, I really liked this book, I didn't want the story to end! I was a member of the Minnesota Twins player Gary Gaetti fanclub "Dr.
Crank" when I lived in Wisconsin in the early's, and I played APBA ball, too, but I never knew the descriptions of what a pitcher does or feels until reading this book.
This was a family of the's in smalltown America, I live in the same small town the author grew up in and went to high school with him, His sister Chris and I were good friends K, That knowledge and history was a filter for me as I read, There werenames I recognized as being from my growingup time in Canandaigua, NY, I was so engrossed in the story though, it didn't come to me right away, I enjoyed the feeling of being an "insider", of course!
Welldeveloped characters, easilyvisualized scenes, real lives, . . a very enJOYable read!
American Past Time starts out as a book about baseball, but is really a family's journey through civil rights, the turbulents and the Viet Nam War.
Dancer Stonemason is a pitcher on a minor league team on his way to the majors, He, then pitches a perfect game in the minor leagues and from the that day on, his life is never the same.
Dancer and his wife Dede, go through many ups and downs, His older son, Clayton, has problems forgiving his father and his brother Jimmy turns out to be a born salesman.
The author has a way of writing so that you truly care about the characters, The ending is a little pat and cliched but it didn't have a strong impact on how I felt about the book.
First novel from Mr. Joy and its a job welldone, This is a delightful read, flowing and intriguing, The theme of baseball is taken to illustrate what, for me, is the real theme: people from a humble origins, their expectations from life, their relationships and struggles.
The story introduces several generations in the midtwentieth , overviewing the way the USA was during this years, economically and culturally, beyond the way individuals felt them or survived them.
The story telling is wellhandled, opening the story toward a change as an organic part of the development in the characters experiences.
The author relates small and big events, revealing that this combination of private and public history is unavoidable, We depend on our time and place for the way we will understand and deal with our lives,
A very pleasurable read, not really about baseball but about family and the highs and lows that come from living with one.
Len Joy does an excellent job with characterization, I especially love the two sons, Clayton and Jimmy, Clayton is just like Dancer, an athlete and stubborn, and is deeply angry with his father because of things that happen in the book that I'm not going to tell you.
Jimmy, a bit pudgy, easygoing, and not an athlete at all is funny, the family caretaker, and a great little businessman even before he makes it into double digits.
Dancer Stonemason, a pitcher for the St, Louis Cardinals minor league Rolla Rebels, is three days from attaining his major league dreams, After giving his all to pitch a perfect game for the Rebels, however, his trip to the majors is postponed, life gets in the way, and he falls into a downward spiral.
Beautifully crafted from double entendre title to closing sentence, Joys first novel is the study of an unforgettable American family through good times and bad.
Darkly nostalgic, the action is set against the major events from the lates on, with race relations ever simmering in the background.
After the perfect game, Dancer never gets his chance due to a perpetually sore arm and the financial needs of his expanding family.
He moves from his offseason job as parts inspector at the Caterpillar plant, to its betterpaying foundry, a Dantean hell run by the Thackers, a father and son Ku Klux Klan team.
“The windows were caked with soot, and the lighting was dim, Once the furnace was fired up and the men started building molds, the air would be filled with carbon ash and fine black molding sand.
The junk hung in the air and made everything look blurry, like a bad dream, ”Shorn of his dream, Dancer starts drinking, gets into fights, is arrested, and becomes increasingly alienated from wife Dede and sons Clayton and Jimmy.
The older son Clayton, who always envisioned Dancer as perfect after seeing him pitch that day, comes to hate his father, despite being just like him.
Meanwhile Dede goes to work and has affairs, all the while helping Dancer whenever hes in trouble, Eventually, Dancer is taken in by an exalcoholic, black milkman, a situation that leads to a violent denouement and Dancers ultimate redemption.
A natural for nostalgia buffs and baseball fans filled with period detail like stingray bikes, Green Stamps, and baseball namedropping Spahn, Larsen, Mantle, and Musial.
But this book is so much more an expertlywritten examination of the importance of dreams to the human psyche that is a mustread for everyone.
ed For Readers' Favorite by Grant Leishman
American Past Time by Len Joy is a delve into the world of family and family dynamics across several crucial decades in Americas growth as a world power and the incredible social change that was being felt across the country during that period.
The author tells his story through the eyes of Dancer Stonemason, a semiprofessional ball player who is just a few days from his potential major league callup.
It is Septemberand playing in what could be the last game for his team, Dancer finds himself on the cusp of pitching a “perfect” game.
The dilemma for Dancer is does he pursue the perfect game and risk his upcoming major league debut or does he put his future and his familys future first and foremost.
From the dizzying heights of adulation and fame, as a smalltown hero, Dancers life and that of his family take a downward spiral.
We follow them through the “bucolic” fifties, as life
seemed to improve for all Americans, through the social change of the sixties and into the seventies, with the backdrop of that war that polarized Americans, the Vietnam War.
Through all of this turmoil, Dancer seeks to find the path that will give him the life he so clearly wants.
Author Len Joy has given us a simple story, with a powerful message, In American Past Time, using the game of baseball as a metaphor for life, he portrays the rise and fall of a simple, workingman in rural America.
What I particularly liked about this story was the corollaries that can been drawn between todays rhetoric and that time in American, seen by many as the “golden age”.
Its well worth noting from this narrative that despite the “rosetinted” glasses there was much that was not great about the America of the fifties, sixties, and seventies, particularly for groups of marginalized Americans, especially people of colour and those who did not conform to the strict societal and evangelical rules of the time, such as the LGBTQ community.
I think the author did an excellent job at highlighting the immense social injustices of the wealth equality gap and the race gap, particularly as it applied to southern, rural, America of the time.
Dancer, as a character was exceptionally well drawn, with recognisable flaws but with a heart for his family and his beloved game.
The read is easy, the language simple and the story compelling, For me, I just wish, given the span of the timeframe, that the story had been longer, The time jumps were a little too large for my liking and more indepth development of, say, Dancers sons growing up and other interesting characters, would have been nice.
That aside, this is an excellent read on the social, economic and familial dynamic of a period of American history often hailed as “the good old days”.
For many, they werent. .