Customer Reviews

The Cleveland Indian: The Legend of King Saturday

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This is a truly appealling adventure, right out of the Doctorow/Carr tradition. For those who are fans ("kranks" in the lingo of the late-1800's), this is a wonderful tale of a spectacular, mysterious ballplayer (an American Indian) and the callow lawyer he befriends. Rich in local color and lore, this novel leads a tangled trail from Cleveland to New York, Boston, San Juan Hill, Mexico, and, finally, the silver mines of Colorado...with the mysterious minions of Standard Oil thrown in for good measure. A really good read from beginning to end.

Luke Salisbury has written a big, flavorful novel about baseball and life. The author doesn't take a false step in crafting the saga of King Saturday. Salisbury has aimed for the fences with this book, and Black Heron Press deserves a standing ovation for bringing it back into print.

The Cleveland Indian: The Legend of King Saturday is a remarkable book of astute detail and elegant prose. The main character King Saturday is based upon, Louis Sockalexis, a Penobscot Indian from Maine, who was one of the greatest college baseball stars of the 1890s. What Salisbury gives us with King Saturday is a remarkable presentation of a full-tilted, hard living character. Saturday's dream is to one day own a baseball team and he will spare no ethics or morality to do so. An incredible admired athlete, as well as a drinker and ladies man, Saturday starts to throw games and bet against the Indians so that he may earn enough to achieve his goal.

As evil as King Saturday could be, author Luke Salisbury manages to create him as a sympathetic, likeable character. The narrator Henry Harrison (lawyer for the Cleveland Spiders) worships the King and is the only man Saturday trusts. Harrison, naïve in the same way Fitzgerald's Nick Carraway is, gets a cruel lesson about life as everything he loves including women, baseball, and friends get taken from him in one way or another. Henry loves Saturday, questions him, uncovers information about him, and because of various events also loathes him. In the end Henry stays loyal to him and that is the essence and hook of the story.

As a fan of baseball I appreciated the novel, yet baseball is not the main focus of The Cleveland Indian. The main focus is the relationships between the characters woven within the historical era of the setting. One could know very little about the game of baseball and still get a lot out of this novel. I found it very interesting to be able to look up the old time player's information and match the facts with the fiction, thus enhancing the background of the tale.

As a writer Luke Salisbury is remarkably efficient with the developing plot, which reads with ease and without labor. His attention to details about the various settings and locations of the novel is refreshing and exciting. The historical facts were informative but not shoved down the reader's throat thus not interfering with the flow of the book. Teams, fields and players which no longer exist are brought to life.

Salisbury's development of his characters is strength of the book. Each character is vibrant, real and the motivations of their actions are also very real and believable. Writing in a first person point of view this isn't always easy to achieve yet Salisbury manages to do it. This clarity allows the plot to advance in a very enjoyable way as I found myself charging through the novel to see how it would all unfold.

My only issues with the novel are that occasionally the author allows us to break from the narrative to tell us background information. For example, when telling us about Marty Bergen, the Boston catcher, the narrator tells us he would later chops up his family with an ax. I googled it, and it was true, but impossible to be known by the Henry Harrison. From a writing perspective is this allowed? For me, I found the details fascinating and not intrusive with any major part of the story but for other readers it may be a distraction. The only distraction I found as a reader was that some of the descriptions of King Saturday, especially his hair, were repetitive yet, The Cleveland Indian: The Legend of King Saturday is still a great read and highly recommended.

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Simply stated, "The Cleveland Indian: The Legend Of King Saturday" by Luke Salisbury is a 'must read' novel for all dedicated baseball fans! The team is the 1897 Cleveland Spiders line-up and the colorful character of King Saturday is modeled on the real-life baseball legend Sockalexis -- a Native American outfielder who gave the Cleveland ball club its name. A blend of schemer, drunk, brawler, killer, con man and hero, King Saturday is also a highly skilled and genuinely talented baseball player. Against the cultural background of American in the 'Gay Nineties', "The Cleveland Indian" is a deftly written novel rich with character, dialogue, and background that make it an unreserved recommendation for personal reading lists and community library collections.

If Sockalexis were alive today, he'd probably sue the author of "The Cleveland Indian" for libel. The character of King Saturday starts out honoring Sockalexis with his feats on the ballfield, like throwing a record-setting 500 feet at a contest, and slugging balls out of the park. But Saturday turns out to be a lying, gambling, murdering thief. That would be fine, except there's a real photo of Sockalexis on the cover of the book, which is "freely modeled" on the real Indian who broke the color barrier in major league ball fifty years before Jackie Robinson.

If you take it all with a grain of salt, it makes for a reasonably entertaining read and takes you back into the colorful, rowdy world of nineteenth baseball.