Sugarball - A Novel of Negro League Baseball, by R. Lee Proctor
Talk Reviews of Early Reviewers Books
Join LibraryThing to post.
1Deborama
Sugarball is a historical novel, not exactly an alternative history, but a novel based on history, with a twist. The main thrust is the special exhibition all-stars of the US Negro Leagues playing the Dominican Republic national team in the 1930s when the DR was under the regime of Rafael Trujillo. (The title Sugarball comes from the fact that the Dominican Republic's economy was entirely based on sugar at that time.) The story is told from the viewpoint of the 12 year old batboy.
Mainly for that reason, for the first few chapters I thought it seemed implausible. But I really warmed to it. The writing is not fantastic, but the great characters, ranging from heroic to endearing to evil and mad, and the lively plotting and the sheer chutzpah of the story made up for any lack of sophistication. Then I got to the Afterword, where the author explained exactly what was fact and what was fiction and his assessment of the likelihood of the fictional parts occurring, and why he had written this novel. (Basically, two extraordinary real life events happened in the same small country at the same time, and the novel posits that there is overlap between them in an audacious "but what if?") I really enjoyed it, and give it five stars.
Mainly for that reason, for the first few chapters I thought it seemed implausible. But I really warmed to it. The writing is not fantastic, but the great characters, ranging from heroic to endearing to evil and mad, and the lively plotting and the sheer chutzpah of the story made up for any lack of sophistication. Then I got to the Afterword, where the author explained exactly what was fact and what was fiction and his assessment of the likelihood of the fictional parts occurring, and why he had written this novel. (Basically, two extraordinary real life events happened in the same small country at the same time, and the novel posits that there is overlap between them in an audacious "but what if?") I really enjoyed it, and give it five stars.
