A disastrous error on the field sends five lives into a tailspin in this award-nominated tale about love, life, and baseball.
At Westish College, a small school on the shore of Lake Michigan, baseball star Henry Skrimshander seems destined for big league stardom. But when a routine throw goes disastrously off course, the fates of five people are upended.

Henry's fight against self-doubt threatens to ruin his future. College president Guert Affenlight, a longtime bachelor, has fallen unexpectedly and helplessly in love. Owen Dunne, Henry's gay roommate and teammate, becomes caught up in a dangerous affair. Mike Schwartz, the Harpooners' team captain and Henry's best friend, realizes he has guided Henry's career at the expense of his own. And Pella Affenlight, Guert's daughter, returns to Westish after escaping an ill-fated marriage, determined to start a new life.

As the season counts down to its climactic final game, these five are forced to confront their deepest hopes, anxieties, and secrets. In the process they forge new bonds, and help one another find their true paths. Written with boundless intelligence and filled with the tenderness of youth, The Art of Fielding is an expansive, warmhearted novel about ambition and its limits, about family and friendship and love, and about commitment -- to oneself and to others.

Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Little Brown and Company
Published: 09/27/2011
ISBN: 9780316204729
Pages: 724
Weight: 2.25lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.10w x 2.00d
Large Print
Accelerated Reader Quiz #/Name: 147967 / Art of Fielding
Reading Level: 5.9 / Interest Level: Upper Grade / Point Value: 24