A review by pussreboots
Diamond Ruby by Joseph Wallace
5.0
Joseph Wallace and I "met" via Twitter. He was talking about his novel Diamond Ruby and described it as a baseball novel set in the 1920s. From that description alone I was hooked and told him so. He was nice enough to arrange for me to receive a review copy.
The book begins on a happy note, a baseball game attended by Ruby and most of her family. After the game she realizes her long arms might be an asset for throwing the perfect pitch. There's just one problem, it isn't ladylike to play baseball.
Instead of taking the warm fuzzy path and showing Ruby coming of age and continuing to practice her pitching, Wallace turns to history and the influenza outbreak that swept through the world after the close of the Great War. Ruby loses most of her family, leaving her the head of house hold an in charge of her two young nieces because her brother is no longer the man he was.
So rather than Ruby becoming a pitching hero through a happy childhood, she does it out of desperation. Her chance to provide for her family comes at price of being a Coney Island side show. The progression from happy child full of day dreams to determined surviver seems real and plausible in Diamond Ruby.
In the final act of the book Wallace takes some poetic license with baseball history and writes things how he wished they had played out. The endnotes include an explanation of what he changed, what historical figures inspired him and why he made the changes that he did.
The book begins on a happy note, a baseball game attended by Ruby and most of her family. After the game she realizes her long arms might be an asset for throwing the perfect pitch. There's just one problem, it isn't ladylike to play baseball.
Instead of taking the warm fuzzy path and showing Ruby coming of age and continuing to practice her pitching, Wallace turns to history and the influenza outbreak that swept through the world after the close of the Great War. Ruby loses most of her family, leaving her the head of house hold an in charge of her two young nieces because her brother is no longer the man he was.
So rather than Ruby becoming a pitching hero through a happy childhood, she does it out of desperation. Her chance to provide for her family comes at price of being a Coney Island side show. The progression from happy child full of day dreams to determined surviver seems real and plausible in Diamond Ruby.
In the final act of the book Wallace takes some poetic license with baseball history and writes things how he wished they had played out. The endnotes include an explanation of what he changed, what historical figures inspired him and why he made the changes that he did.