Spirits in the Grass [Hardcover]

When Bill Meissners collection of short storiesHitting into the Windwas published in 1994, it was called a quiet masterpiece of baseball writing by the Greensboro, North Carolina,News and Record. TheSeattle Post-Intelligencersaid, Bill Meissner captures baseball with all its crystalline beautythe remarkable reverberation of time and space and character. AndThe New York Times Book Reviewsaid, Just about every tale here recalls those precious years when a chance to play in the majors was all a boy could ask from life.

Now, in his first novel, Bill Meissner again uses baseball as a window to his characters. InSpirits in the Grass, we meet Luke Tanner, a thirty-something ball player helping to build a new baseball field in his beloved hometown of Clearwater, Wisconsin. Luke looks forward to trying out for the local amateur team as soon as possible. His chance discovery of a small bone fragment on the field sets in motion a series of events and discoveries that will involve his neighbors, local politicians, and the nearby Native American reservation. Lukes life, most of all, will be transformed. His growing obsession with the ball field and whats beneath it threatens his still fragile relationship with his partner, Louise, and challenges Lukes assumptions about everyone, especially himself.

Spirits in the Grassrings true with small-town Midwestern values. The characters, including Lukes independent partner Louise, grapple with their passion and their identities. In this beautiful and haunting novel, baseball serves as a metaphor for life itself, with its losses and defeats, its glories and triumphs.

InSpirits in the Grass, Luke Tanner, while helping to build a new baseball field in his hometown, discovers a small bone fragment on the field, which quickly becomes his obsession.

Bill Meissner has won numerous awards for his writing, including PEN/NEA Syndicated Fiction Awards. He is t