Twelve-year-old House Jackson—star pitcher and team captain of the Aurora County All-Stars—has been sidelined for a whole sorry year with a broken elbow. He's finally ready to play, but wouldn't you know that the team'sonlygame of the year has been scheduled for the exact same time as the town's 200th-anniversary pageant. Now House must face the pageant's director, full-of-herself Frances Shotz (his nemesis and perpetrator of the elbow break), and get his team out of this mess. There's also the matter of a mysterious old recluse who has died and left House a wheezy old dog named Eudora Welty—and a puzzling book of poetry by someone named Walt Whitman.
Through the long, hot month of June, House makes surprising and valuable discoveries about family, friendship, poetry . . . and baseball.
What's more important than baseball?
* A poignant and humorous coming-of-age story. —Kirkus Reviews,starred review
A slow-simmering stew of friendship and betrayal, family love and loyalty, and finding oneself. —SLJ
* A home run for Wiles. —Publishers Weekly, starred review
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Chapter 1
To me, every hour of the day and night
is an unspeakably perfect miracle.
WALT WHITMAN
Mr. Norwood Rhinehart Beauregard Boyd, age eighty-eight, philanthropist, philosopher, and maker of mystery, died on a June morning in Mabel, Mississippi, at home in his bed.
He died at the simmering time just before daybreak. Crickets tucked themselves under rocks for the day. Blue jays chitter-chattered in the pines. High above the treetops, cirrus clouds wisped across a slate blƒ+
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