Customer Reviews

Havana Heat: A Novel

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As with his first novel, "If I Never Get Back", Darryl Brock again takes us into baseball's historical past. This time it is back to 1911, where we meet deaf pitcher Luther 'Dummy' Taylor. Taylor was a real-life pitcher who played for John McGraw's Giants. The story introduces us to Taylor at age 36, having been forced to the bush leagues due to an arm injury. Claiming his arm now healed, he convinces McGraw to include him on a team headed down to Cuba to play local teams. Brock has done a fantastic job of researching major league baseball in the early 1900's. Fans of today who look back fondly at baseball's 'Golden Age' should read this book. They will find that todays players are surprisingly more loyal and stable characters compared to their counterparts of yesteryear. Brock also gives us a glimpse of what life for a deaf man was like in those days. Due to birth defects and prenatal illness, deaf people were much more common than they are today, and were treated better than we of today might think. We also get to see what life in Cuba was like. We find that governments and the political climates may have changed, but life for the people has stayed much as it was then. Those who read "If I Never Get Back" will also be pleased to know that a brief reference is made to two characters from that story. Overall, I found "Havana Heat" to be a thoughouly entertaining book. Fans of character study will enjoy it as much as history and baseball buffs.

As a former player, avid fan and high school English teacher, I am always interested in good baseball literature, not the kind which over analyzes to the point of nauseum (i.e. George Will's Men at Work). By good baseball literature, I mean the type of writing where one feels as if one is on the ballfield, sharing the highs and lows of playing this most difficult sport. One of the best of this genre is Mr. Brock's If I Never Get Back, a mastery of baseball realism fused with time travel (why this is currently out of print escapes me). Havana Heat is also terrific. As someone currently going through a pre middle age withdrawal from playing baseball, I immediately could identify with Dummy Taylor's yearning to return to the bigs. There are several components which make this book great: the recreation of the NY Giants - Phil. Athletics 1911 World Series, the difficulty of being a major leaguer during this era, life in Cuba and perhaps most interesting, the telling of a story through the voice of a deaf person. This story is both compelling and ultimately very sad as the two heroes have to deal with the inevitable: age and racism. I became so interested in the Cuban aspect of this book that I immediately picked up S.L Price's terrific Pitching Around Fidel which examines the current sports scene in this remarkable island. Havana Heat, while just a notch below If I Never Get Back, is a must read for anyone, not just baseball fans. A great start to the new season. Now if only the Giants and A's can follow!

Darryl Brock has written a riveting, page-turning baseball novel that should be on every baseball fan's shelf. Weaving a narrative storyline out of real-life events is never easy, but Brock pulls it off with great skill. The baseball scenes are top-notch, and the humor is frequent. Much of the baseball information is reminiscent of details Al Stump used in his great biography of Ty Cobb. Good baseball novels are hard to find...I hope Mr. Brock continues his efforts!

Darryl Brock's "Havana Heat" is a fine novel about many things. On one level, it is a book about communication -- in this case communication between a deaf baseball player (the real-life Luther Taylor) and the world around him: his wife, the folks who live in his town, and his teammates on the New York Giants. The real Taylor was a superb, but now unknown, pitcher for those Giants, and Brock brings to life his career, his robust life, and his relationships to other players. However, the book is more than that as well. Brock's acute attention to detail gives us a sense of what baseball and baseball players were like in 1911. Those were the colorful Giants of Christy Mathewson and the pugnacious John McGraw -- each worthy of his own book. A third element of the book is the trip the Giants take to Havana for a series of exhibition games against the excellent Cuban ballplayers, players who love the game as much as Americans. Particularly vivid is Brock's depiction not only of those games, but also of life in Cuba -- all the more relevant with Cuba's role in today's news. Finally, one of the book's most elegant subplots shows us how Taylor takes under his wide wing a local boy, with a magnificent arm, but who is also deaf. Brock has brought to life both characters, stories, and history not well-known to most readers. You won't forget any of it. Very highly recommended not just to baseball readers, but to anyone who loves well-crafted, well-researched, and deeply satisfying fiction.

I noticed that while reading the other reviews, they were all people who had read this author before or love baseball. I am writing this review from the view of a Deaf person. In the first chapter, the author opens up with a scene at a Deaf school. For those of you who don't know, the Deaf school is a sense of pride in the Deaf community and the author seemed to have an awareness of that. Luther "Dummy" Tayler (all players who were Deaf back in the early 1900s were called "Dummy" - so don't take offense) used different means of communication throughout the book. He always seemed more comfortable with those who signed. His wife is Deaf, which is another culture instance within the Deaf community - marrying other Deaf people due to communication issues. This book also shows that Deaf people are actually quite smart (which is opposite the nickname, "Dummy"). This book was not written by a Deaf author, but he was well-informed and it is worth reading! Enjoy!

Good baseball novels transcend the sport itself and reveal understandings of how the game mirrors and develops our national character. Additionally, our best sports novelists encourage us to broaden our historical imaginations and inspire us to show empathy for conflicted characters who encounter both athletic and personal crises. Darryl Brock's convincing "Havana Heat" ably captures baseball's enduring importance as a metaphor for our national experience and deftly explores the influences of frustrated ambition, unvarnished competition and crippling racism in the sport itself. Though set in the early days of the twentieth century, the novel maintains a timelessness through its conflicted, but admirable protagonist.

The baseball described in "Heat" is meticulously accurate, yet the novel's rather formulaic melodramatic structure is not its dominant strength. Instead, Brock's vivid characterizations and his passioate commitment to historical accuracy are the hallmarks of this strong novel. Focusing on the attempted comeback of former New York Giant hurler Luther "Dummy" Taylor and the obstacles confronting a renewal of his career erected by the irascible, intemperate and tyrannical manager, John McGraw, the novel reveals the internal tensions and ambivalences Lu experiences during a 1911 barnstorming tour in Cuba. Taylor learns, at times reluctantly and painfully, that a person's worth is determined by much more than his win-loss record, that development of character and hope are more vital than prolonging a moribund career, that the satisfactions of teaching far outweigh the evanscent thrills of victory. Ultimately, Brock's greatest virtue as a novelist is his knack for using the action of the game and fluidity of the sport as representations of the human capacity for growth, self-forgiveness and redemption.

And that's not all. Brock writes with a refined and welcomed advocacy for the hearing impaired. Even though deaf players in the dead-ball era were invariably called "Dummy," at least they were in the big leagues. Where are the hearing impaired role models today in the national sport? The author's eloquent description of signing speaks directly to how much Brock believes sports novelists can write about much more than the game: "People who feel sorry for deaf folks don't have it quite right. Sign is a rich language...it also makes for a special kind of closeness. For one thing, you have to pay closer attention to others when you can't hear their words. You come to know them in ways that are direct and intimate."

Finally, Brock pays painstaking attention to detail. His historical descriptions of the atrocities a Kansas regiment committed while fighting against the revolutionary insurgents in the Philippines and his deft inclusion of reconcentration camps in rural Cuba by the Spanish (which left a heritage of bitterness and racial division) are but two examples of how hard the author worked to create a sense of authenticity. "Havana Heat"'s melodramatic structure is the only weakness in an otherwise compelling and convincing novel.

This book is great historical fiction. The central character is based on real-life deaf pitcher Luther 'Dummy' Taylor and a fictional trip to Cuba. So not only does this book tell a great story about Cuba, Baseball, and life at the turn-of-the-century, it tells it all from the point of view of a deaf man. Imagine being a pitcher on the field, 50,000 screaming fans, and you can't hear them. Amazing. This is a great book.

I loved Darryl Brock's first baseball novel, If I Never Get Back, and was hoping his new book would be as riveting as the first. It is, and I enjoyed it immensely. Brock undertook a tremendous challenge in narrating his book through a deaf mute, and proved himself more than equal to the challenge. He transports us into the world of Luther Taylor, the turn of the century pitcher for the New York Giants, and weaves an engrossing tale of adventure in early 20th century Cuba. As always, his historical research is right on the mark, and his storytelling genius comes through chapter after chapter. A great read.

Reading Darryl Brock's carefully researched and moving story about baseball in the-of-the century Cuba made me feel I was actully living "Dummy" Taylor's life. -Al Gowan, author, Santiago Rag, a novel of the Spanish-Cuban-American War.

I just finished reading Havana Heat and recommend it to those of your who are sports fans, especially if you have an interest in sports history. It will also appeal to a wide range of other readers who like a good story.