Spirits in the Grass [Hardcover]

Bill Meissner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 15, 2008

“Meissner has the storyteller’s gift for creative living characters, living speech, living emotions, living drama. He knows his small town baseball, but beyond that, he knows the human spirit.” —Tim O’Brien, author of The Things They Carried

 

“In Spirits in the Grass, Meissner explores the hidden heart of America’s Midwest—scratching hard at his character’s dreams to release their nightmares, their truths. His words are supple as grass, his language a graceful dance that is a pure joy to read.” —Susan Power, author of The Grass Dancer

 

“This novel is a rare achievement, an extraordinary story of a man’s desire to resurrect his past, to redeem and restore the world he knew as a boy, while he confronts the crimes around him. Juxtaposing baseball, Native American history and religion, and small town life, Meissner has created a genuine original.” —Jonis Agee, University of Nebraska, author of South of Resurrection and The River Wife

 

“Bill Meissner’s Spirits in the Grass is nothing short of stunning, his mastery of the prose is evident in virtually every sentence as it intensifies and heightens the intrigue of the wonderful story being told. This is a vibrant and original novel, a triumph, and Meissner’s linguistic veracity places him among the finest prose stylists writing today.” —Jack Driscoll, author of How Like an Angel

 

In Spirits in the Grass we meet Luke Tanner, a thirty-something baseball player helping to build a new baseball field in his beloved hometown of Clearwater, Wisconsin. Luke looks forward to trying out for the local amateur team as soon as possible. His chance discovery of a small bone fragment on the field sets in motion a series of events and discoveries that will involve his neighbors, local politicians, and the nearby Native American reservation. Luke’s life, most of all, will be transformed. His growing obsession with the ball field and what’s beneath it threatens his still fragile relationship with his partner, Louise, and challenges Luke’s assumptions about everyone, especially himself.

 

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Novels about baseball or small-town life often fall prey to a too-easy sentimentality and a tendency toward soft-focus prose. Meissner tackles both these topics but, remarkably, avoids both flaws. Luke is a thirtysomething dreamer living a desultory life in a small Wisconsin town and wishing his high-school baseball career hadn’t ended. Now he’s helping build a new ball field and hoping to get a second chance in a local amateur league. But when he finds bone shards in the turf, it appears that the field may be a Native American burial ground; caught between representatives of the local Indian tribe, who want to purify the ground, and the town’s mayor, who wants to protect his plans for a new highway, Luke sees his dream fading yet again. Meanwhile, his girlfriend, Louise, is fed up with the town and with Luke’s inability to keep his mind out of the “dream-smeared sky.” Meissner handles all his story lines—the centerfielder manqué, the “spirits in the grass,” the troubled romance, the fight with city hall—with admirable subtlety, sidestepping the multiple clichés that can so easily attach themselves to all of these themes. This is a quiet novel but an emotionally powerful one, rich with ambiguity and with the scent of felt life. --Bill Ott

Review

“In Spirits in the Grass [Meissner] has linked personal and racial history and identity, intimate drama and outright mystery, and the awakening of romance and self-awareness. That's a lot to bring together. . . . But while the mayor flails around . . . and Luke learns something about himself, and the town of Clearwater comes to terms with its shady past and uncertain future, the spirits in the grass rise and assemble, murmuring a truth impervious to villainy, easy psychological insight, and cliché.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

“An accomplished literary writer crafts a resonant Midwest baseball novel centering on the drama that results when work building a baseball field in a small Wisconsin town uncovers evidence of the area’s Native American past. Luke Tanner, longtime baseball player who makes the discovery, finds his life altered. Meissner has a gift for creating real people on the page.” —Seattle Post-Intelligencer

“Novels about baseball or small-town life often fall prey to a too-easy sentimentality and a tendency toward soft-focus prose. Meissner tackles both these topics but, remarkably, avoids both flaws. Luke is a thirtysomething dreamer living a desultory life in a small Wisconsin town and wishing his high-school baseball career hadn’t ended. Now he’s helping build a new ball field and hoping to get a second chance in a local amateur league. But when he finds bone shards in the turf, it appears that the field may be a Native American burial ground; caught between representatives of the local Indian tribe, who want to purify the ground, and the town’s mayor, who wants to protect his plans for a new highway, Luke sees his dream fading yet again. Meanwhile, his girlfriend, Louise, is fed up with the town and with Luke’s inability to keep his mind out of the ‘dream-smeared sky.’ Meissner handles all his story lines—the centerfielder manqué, the ‘spirits in the grass,’ the troubled romance, the fight with city hall—with admirable subtlety, sidestepping the multiple clichés that can so easily attach themselves to all of these themes. This is a quiet novel but an emotionally powerful one, rich with ambiguity and with the scent of felt life.” — starred review in Booklist

“Spirits in the Grass delves into the cultural tension between Native Americans and Caucasians and seeks to expose the ugliness of racism and the violent aftermath such racial hatred can leave in its wake. Meissner's creativity with words delights the senses and brings to life the book's small-town, Midwestern setting.” —Minnesota Literature Newsletter

“Spirits in the Grass is part mystery and part romance, but mostly, it is the story of life’s ebb and flow in a small Midwestern town and of one man’s place in it. Meissner’s evocative description and strong characterization bring the story to life for the reader.” —Multicultural Review

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press; 1st edition (September 15, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 026803513X
• ISBN-13: 978-0268035136
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,611,596 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Savor Meissner's way with words, October 16, 2008

By 

Armchair Interviews (Minneapolis, MN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Spirits in the Grass (Hardcover)

I thought I knew what to expect when I picked up Bill Meissner's Spirits in the Grass. It was easy to assume with a cover that could be used as a promotional poster for movie, Field of Dreams, that it was first a book about baseball. After all, the cover shows a shadowed profile of a young ballplayer in the midst of a field of prairie grass, a bat flung over his shoulder, looking off into the distance and nothing but horizon to stop his ball. I guess I didn't notice the dark clouds.

It's a mistake to think Spirits in the Grass is just about baseball, unless, of course, you're talking about baseball as a larger metaphor for the way we live our lives. It is the beautifully told story of a young man trying to recapture old dreams, discover who he is historically, psychologically and philosophically, come to terms with relationships old and new, and seek justice. Like the clouds on the cover, Meissner has created a beautifully nuanced work--degrees of guilt and innocence, degrees of responsibility, degrees of distance and hate, and degrees of love and connection.

In the end, though, Spirits in the Grass, is all about the words. Like the work itself, the words are all about nuance. With so many beautiful passages, it's difficult to choose but just let these following words sink into your soul like a cup of hot tea on a cold night.

"Perhaps it's the voice of Luke's mother, a voice so far back in his life that he doesn't really remember hearing it. He pictures her soft words climbing up through the grass blades and tickling his bare ankles, then floating upward like swirls of fragrant incense." (p. 66)

I wasn't as attached to the characters as I usually am but I think maybe that is because it's just so easy to get lost in the words and "float upward like swirls of fragrant incense" so I can't complain.

Spirits in the Grass is a compelling and haunting book that will stay with you long after you've finished it.

Meissner is a Professor of English and Director of the Creative Writing Program at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota. He also has written books of poetry and short stories.

Armchair Interviews says: A read to savor for the writing's quality and storytelling.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Perfect Gift for Christmas, December 6, 2008

By 

Billie Pagliolo (Newport Beach, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Spirits in the Grass (Hardcover)

I love this book! I agree with the comment on Amazon by armchairinterviews.com that it's easy to assume from the cover that this is a Field of Dreams story. It's not. This is novel that is layered with an evolving love story, an unsolved mystery, an examination of blatant racism and prejudice, a description of small town nepotism, and the portrayal of journeys of personal discovery.

The elements of this novel remind me of a colorfully painted Russian nesting doll. On the outside we have the small town of Clearwater, Wisconsin and the baseball field, both of which form the backdrop to the story. Open up that piece and you have the people of this Midwestern small town whose essence Meissner captures flawlessly. (I was born in Milwaukee so I know!) The next "nesting doll" contains the Native American people of the town who live on its periphery, but are integral to its history and to the story line. Twist open the fourth piece and there is the unresolved past relationship between Luke and his father and a secret to boot! Finally, at the core of this novel is the love story of Luke and Louise. As a woman reader, I actually find Louise's need for risk taking at the "core of the core." Ironically, I was reading the passage of Louise imagining herself out of Clearwater ("Her bare feet sink into the expanse of the white sands on a Mexican beach. She's at the base of a rainbow threaded waterfall in Hawaii") when a few grains of sand blew across the book on my lap on a beach in California that I had never dreamed I'd be on in the middle of the day - and at that moment, I wanted to tell Louise to follow her instinct.

Having been born in Wisconsin myself, I felt the descriptions in the novel so familiar to me that I was shocked. It was as if the author had been inside my head as I was growing up there, noting the lake in the way I thought of it, hearing the voices the way I had heard them.

I first came upon Bill Meissner's work years ago when I heard him being interviewed on Minnesota Public Radio when "Hitting Into the Wind" was released. Since that time, I have followed all of Meissner's work, and whether I'm reading one of his essays or his poetry or a novel such as this newest one, I always walk away with insights and understanding that stay with me long after the book is put down.

It's fortunate that this novel has come out before the holiday season because I see it as a wonderful gift for any one who is native to Wisconsin; for any one who likes the element of mystery; for anyone who belongs to a book club (plenty of philosophical and sociological discussion here); for anyone who loves the kind of baseball that's played in a small town by players who, but for circumstances, would have been in the major leagues; and, most importantly, for any one who longs to be inspired by stories of those who dare to open their minds to worlds outside their own.