The Seventh Babe

Thank goodness this baby came back into print! I echo what the guys below have said, and add only that if you've read other greats in this genre--The Great American Novel, The Celebrant, Shoeless Joe, Sam's Legacy--this will stand proudly along side them, and should be next.

In my misspent youth there was a confection that kept calling itself a gum and a candy. In fact, it was neither. "The Seventh Babe" is the literary equivalent of that product. It proports to be a baseball novel, yet how many novels on that genre tell us of a Neverland of baseball players, living outside of time and practicing the purest joyful form of the game. It might be a fantasy, yet the elements of out national pastime shape it's direction more then any dragon or demon. Did the baseball strike of a few years ago kill your love for the sport? Here is the remedy! Real yet magical. Jerome Charyn has show us there is no voice quite like his.