On Nov. 21 The Naples Press Club will present a Book Fair at Barnes & Noble at the Waterside Shops in Naples, Fla. Twenty local authors have been invited to show and sell their books, and each will get ten minutes to speak on the stage.
As the author of 29 books, I am one of the presenters. The book I’m featuring is Drawing Card: A Baseball Novel (McFarland 2012), a historical novel based on real events in baseball history. The main character is a Cleveland woman ballplayer who is hired to play on a minor-league team, but when Commissioner Landis learns that the player is a woman, he cancels her contract, thus penalizing both team and player.
In the early part of the 20th century, many amateur and professional teams operated loosely: a pro female player might play on a pro male team, or a male professional on a pro female team. But the minors, which were controlled by the major leagues, could not take advantage of this looser atmosphere by hiring excellent women players for their teams. Discrimination against women permeated the majors and most of the minors. The Commissioner enforced the barrier against women in the minors and majors.
Women who had signed minor-league contracts but were rejected by the Commissioner had no recourse, or could think of none, so they went home and found some other way to play baseball or another sport. But in Drawing Card, the main character, a fiery woman of Sicilian descent, refuses to accept her rejection and, after getting involved with the Cleveland mafia, finds a way to strike back at the Commissioner.
Reviews of Drawing Card call it “compelling,” “an extraordinary novel,” and “a lusty, time-traveling murder mystery.”
The Book Fair starts at 4:00 P.M. My presentation of Drawing Card is scheduled for 4:50 P.M. All presentations are over by 7:30 P.M.
At my table in Barnes & Noble I will be showing many of my other books, particularly my baseball histories, as well as my best-selling children’s book, Ann Likes Red, and my book about a cat I once owned, entitled I Know What My Cat Is Thinking, and It Isn’t Very Complimentary. Everything is being offered at sale prices.
Participants in the Naples Press Club Book Fair benefit student journalism majors by contributing to the Club’s Terrence J. Miller Scholarship Fund.
If you are a book lover, this Naples event is for you.