From Publishers Weekly
Hester's endearing, nostalgic yarn set in Alma, N.C., during the early 1950s evokes bygone times?both in the national lifestyle and in the life of its youthful narrator?with vividness and humor. E.Z. Poole, 14-year-old orphan, part-time utility infielder for Alma's Class D baseball team, becomes its chief scout for a special project dreamed up by the team's parsimonious owner, Sam Bean. Sam wants E.Z. to find him "another Jackie Robinson" somewhere among the "Darker Persons" of the hemisphere, and?more importantly?to babysit the alcoholic, unlicensed team doctor and the decrepit team manager who will accompany E.Z. on his journey. Amazingly, they bring someone back, a Ruthian pitching and batting talent from Florida named Josh Loganberry. Josh doesn't much care for baseball (his heart's set on being a volunteer fireman), he's just a bit smarter than wood and he's not a "Darker Person," but he single-handedly wins enough games for Sam to challenge a major league club to play his Behemoths in a heavily promoted exhibition. Hester, a short-story writer and poet (With Crockett at the Alamo) lets E.Z. narrate his first novel in a voice enriched by rough grammar and frequent malapropisms. In fact, with E.Z.'s hick-smarts, a cast of farcical charlatans and some good-natured social satire, Hester?as is clearly his intention?does a fair impersonation of Mark Twain.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
In the spirit of contemporary writer Nelsen Algarin, and that American literary gem of the past, Mark Twain, M.L. Hester is in touch with the realities of life on the American landscape. With sardonic wit and humor he tells the story of Another Jackie Robinson. It's true that his story starts somewhere around the funny bone, but it ends up at the heart. In 1953, in Alma, North Carolina, Sam Bean, proprietor of the local Class D baseball team, known as the Behemoths, decides to hunt up "another Jackie Robinson" to bring his team to glory in the minor leagues. Sam, however, is a tightwad, and to save money he determines to send out a couple of scouts, Pop, an old guy who spends the off-season in a nursing home, and the hard-drinking Dr. G. B. Stevens, the team physician (who may not actually have graduated from medical school, but whose services come cheap). These two "fine" judges go off through the South to find "another Jackie Robinson," but will these stumbling bumblers ever make it back again? That is the question. Here's where E. Z. Poole, a half orphaned, full-time truant, enters the landscape. Recently elevated from bat boy to part-time infielder, his bad grammar and relentless honesty make him the ingenuous and believable comic voice in which the story is told. His down to earth insights give the entire story an odd and highly appealing clarity. The events that follow reveal the American character, brought to the fore in the antics of several all-too-typical, yet weirdly original characterizations. This is where Hester matches that humor of Twain. Readers will be charmed and appalled by this very American tale. Another Jackie Robinson is more than a baseball story. This tale touches the very substance of the land and its madness with sociological truths that reveal racist and materialist attitudes. Along the way we meet Cadillac salesmen, Patagonians, fighting parrots, iconic jockey straps, scheming agents, placebo pills, and the baseball fever upon which much of the competitive fabric of the nation is built. One suddenly comes to understand the war-time economics which oil America's gears. Everything about the American character is made clear with Hester's wisdom and irony, but ultimately there is a heart to this story. Hester is one of the fine, unsung writers of our South. He deserves a wide audience. -- From Independent Publisher
