If you’re reading this, odds are you know about my book, When the Sparrow Sings, which takes place (mostly) over the course of one baseball game. You know it’s been coming out in bits and pieces all year. But, finally, it’s time for a full release.
You can easily buy the book here or at Amazon. If you use the first link, I get a bigger cut, but I’ll be thrilled with each and every purchase. I really will. It’s a lot of work to write a novel, and it’s great to have it published, but it’s even better to have people buy it and read it and show that they value the work you do. Plus, there are fun extras. The book will include the following features:
1. A bonus story
2. A box score of the game
3. 11 illustrations
4. Words that form a story
Those first two are available only if you purchase a copy,
Perhaps the coolest thing is that Joe Posnanski was kind enough to read the book and give us the following snippet which you can find on the back of the book:
“Baseball fiction is hard. Well, all fiction is hard, but baseball fiction is particularly so because the game is so hard to capture. What makes Jason Linden’s When the Sparrow Sings so compelling is that it is easy to forget that it is fiction. The baseball feels authentic and close and — like the real thing — so fleeting.”
If you’re still wondering what the book is about, here’s the synopsis from the back, which carefully avoids giving away plot stuff:
Zack Hiatt is the best pitcher on maybe the best team in baseball, and he is going to the World Series. Zack’s arrival on the big stage is the culmination of his father’s dream as much as his own, and Zack has the scars to prove it. But before he can even throw a pitch in the Series, his father dies in a tragic car accident.
The first question – whether or not to pitch – isn’t even a question. He has to pitch. The world demands it of him. And so he does. What follows is a story about trying to hold it together when you shouldn’t have to and about the memories our parents leave with us when they’re gone.
Thanks, Nation, for reading over the course of the year, and thanks extra to the many of you who are going to follow that link to buy the book.