Spirits in the Grass - Meissner, Bill

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Résumé :
When Bill Meissner's collection of short stories Hitting into the Wind was published in 1994, it was called a quiet masterpiece of baseball writing by the Greensboro, North Carolina, News and Record. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer said, Bill Meissner captures baseball with all its crystalline beauty-the remarkable reverberation of time and space and character. And The New York Times Book Review said, Just about every tale here recalls those precious years when a chance to play in the majors was all a boy could ask from life. Now, in his first novel, Bill Meissner again uses baseball as a window to his characters. In Spirits in the Grass, we meet Luke Tanner, a thirty-something ball 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. Spirits in the Grass rings true with small-town Midwestern values. The characters, including Luke's independent partner Louise, grapple with their passion and their identities. In this beautiful and haunting novel, baseball serves as a metaphor for life itself, with its losses and defeats, its glories and triumphs.

Biographie:
St. Cloud, Mn. writer and teacher Bill Meissner is the author of eleven books. His newest collection, a book of short stories with a baseball theme, is Light at the Edge of the Field (Stephen F. Austin University Press). His five collections of poetry include American Compass (U. of Notre Dame Press), Learning to Breathe Underwater and The Sleepwalker's Son (Ohio U. Press) and Twin Sons of Different Mirrors (Milkweed Editions). His latest book of poetry, The Mapmaker's Dream (Finishing Line Press, 2019).Bill's novel, Spirits in the Grass (U. of Notre Dame Press), won the Midwest Book Award. His forthcoming novel, set in the turbulent late 1960s, is Summer of Rain, Summer of Fire. His two books of short stories are Hitting into the Wind (Random House Publishers/SMU Press Paperback/Dzanc Press ebook) and The Road to Cosmos ( University of Notre Dame Press paperback and ebook). Bill's hobbies and interests include travel, rock music, baseball, photography, pulp fiction magazines, and collecting (too many) vintage typewriters. He has taught creative writing at St. Cloud State U., and frequently presents workshops at local elementary schools, high schools and colleges as a visiting writer. He lives in Saint Cloud with his wife, Christine.

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