A fictitious baseball card engineered by my friend Rick Shubb

The Fade-away

Fade-away is an old-time baseball term for the pitch that is now called a screw ball.

My novel, The Fade-away, revolves around a washed-up, ex-Big League pitcher —a Native American named Jack Dobbs— who emerges, half-drowned, from a back water of San Francisco Bay in April, 1900.

Dobbs, nicknamed "The Chief," begins to lead a ragtag team of locals to victory, but he does so by cheating, and that's what makes The Fade-away different from most sports tales. It's about ethics. It's about greed. It's about America on the edge of modernity.

Here's what some friends have had to say about it:

"An exceptionally strong historical novel. It's a romantic comedy with dark undertones, or perhaps a tragedy presented with warmth and humor: either way, the balance is deftly struck."
--Steve Treder "The Hardball Times" (The full review)

"I liked it a lot! It's a decidedly surprising book and a curiously sad one as well. There's a kind of elegiac quality about it: a regret for at least certain aspects of a time and place long, long gone."
--Peter S. Beagle, Author of "The Last Unicorn", "A Fine and Private Place", and "I See By My Outfit"

"Excellent. I especially like the kaleidoscopic narrative viewpoint and, as a writer of historical fiction myself, I appreciate the research and how well the book blends exposition with plot."
--Darryl Brock, Author of "If I Never Get Back" and "Two in the Field"

"I liked The Fade-away very much. It captures a place and time which at first seems enviable, almost innocent, but as the story develops we see how very dark life in those times actually was."
--Nilda Rego, historian and Contra Costa Times columnist

If you'd like to buy a copy of The Fade-away, you can do so by going to Amazon.com or, if you don't like Amazon, you can order it directly from the publisher, Pocol Press.

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