Stealing Home
by Philip F. O'Connor
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"Benjamin and Marilyn Dunne, Bobo, Annie, Suzie. Here, in this tremendously moving novel, is an American family today, riding out a kind of crisis of feelings and identity that is particular to our time. We see them, the Dunnes, through the eyes of the young husband, Benjamin-in his mid-thirties-whose apparently solid and agreeable life is beginning to unravel. His marriage is coming apart. His wife, Marilyn, suddenly and deeply wants more than her days contain. His twelve-year-old boy is show more becoming unbearably sullen (you talk to Bobo and he puts his fingers in his ears). Benjamin's own emotional vertigo is turning him toward another woman ... What happens as he tries to pull his life together is told in the dramatic, fresh, and beautifully rendered context of a half-pint baseball season. Benjamin, trying to contain his anger at his infuriating twelve-year-old, volunteers to coach the team on which Bobo plays. Bobo's response" "Trade me." The other kids catch his hostility. And Benjamin, even while coping with all the adult nonsense and intrigue that surround small-fry baseball leagues, finds himself obsessively determined to win-to win the respect of the team, to win Bobo, to win games. To win back his own slipping command of himself and his life. As the summer progresses, the small and the large dramas intermingle and reflect each other. The daily suspense of the ball field-that miniature yet altogether serious world of contest and passion-is both part of, and emblem of, the larger suspense, the turbulence, the conflict, the striving that takes place within Benjamin as he tries to resolve his panics and confusions. What will be his relationship with his wife (he thinks they belong together, but do they?); with the woman who, in his bad time, has given him wine and cheese and cheerfulness and taken him into her bed (what does he owe her?); with his children; and with himself? ..."--Jacket. show lessTags
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Philip F. O'Connor was born in San Francisco on December 3, 1932. He attended the University of San Francisco, graduating in 1954. He received a M.A. in English from San Francisco State College (1961) and a M.F.A. from the University of Iowa Creative Writing Program (1962). After college, he joined the army, and served in England. When he returned show more to America, he held a series of jobs, including journalist and high school teacher. From 1963 to 1967, he taught English at Clarkson College of Technology. He later established the Creative Writing Program at Bowling Green University, serving as writer-in-residence and director of the program. He was named Distinguished University Professor in 1989, and retired in 1994. He wrote many short stories throughout his academic career, and his first collection, Old Morals, Small Continents, Darker Times (1971) won the Iowa School of Letters Award for Short Fiction. His novels include Stealing Home (1979, winner of the Nancy Dasher Award for Best Ohio Fiction and nominee for the American Book Writers Awards Best First Novel) and Defending Civilization (1988, winner of the McNaughton Award and nominee of the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award). (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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