Stealing Home

Hubs and I have an agreement of sorts. I watch chick-flicks with his mother and he watches shoot 'em ups with his dad. When we watch movies together, they must be about sports or horses (and occasional dog movie sneaks it's way in as well as a Hallmark Hall of Famer, but if you watch closely, it probably still has sports or horses in it). I don't like blood and gore, he doesn't like cliche, neither of us like to watch people make really stupid mistakes--even if they are fiction.

All of that to say, that if Allison Pittman's Stealing Home were made into a movie, it would be one we'd both really enjoy. Nothing like a good, turn-of-the-century baseball flick, or in this instance, book.

It’s 1905 and the Chicago Cubs are banking on superstar Donald “Duke” Dennison’s golden arm to help them win the pennant. Only one thing stands between Duke and an unprecedented ten thousand dollar contract: alcohol.

That’s when sportswriter David Voyant whisks Duke to the one-horse town of Picksville, Missouri, so he can sober up in anonymity. He bides his time flirting with Ellie Jane Voyant, his unofficial chaperone, who would rather hide herself in the railway station ticket booth than face the echoes of childhood taunts.

Ned Clovis, the feed store clerk, has secretly loved Ellie Jane since childhood, but he loves baseball and the Duke almost as much–until he notices Ellie Jane may be succumbing to the star’s charm.

Then there’s Morris, a twelve-year-old Negro boy, whose only dream is to break away from Picksville. When Duke discovers his innate talent for throwing a baseball, Morris might just have found his way out.

Four individuals, each living in haunted isolation, each harboring a secret passion. Providence brings them together. Tragedy threatens to tear them apart. Will love be enough to bring them home?

Allison Pittman spent seventeen years as a high school English teacher, and then shunned the advice of “experts,” quit her day job and set out to write novels that bring glory to God. She relishes inspiring other writers and leading the theater arts group at her church. She and her husband and three sons live in Universal City, Texas.

OK, OK, you caught me. And sci-fi, but it just didn't fit into this post, now did it?