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Safe at Home by Richard Doster is great book for
sports fans and those interested in colorful regional
historical fiction.
Just in time for the baseball All Star break, one of this year’s most exciting new writers has landed a Christy Award nod for his baseball-loving first novel. Richard Doster, a writer for the Atlanta Constitution Journal, released Safe at Home earlier this year to little fanfare. But the 25-year advertising veteran is now a finalist for the Christy “First Novel” award, the authoritative literary award for Christian fiction.
Part regional picturesque, part historical fiction, and all Rocky-style sports thriller, Safe at Home paints the portrait of Whitney, a small southern town struggling to find balance in the face of a quickly changing modern world, circa 1953. With air conditioning and television drawing crowds away from America’s pastime, the local baseball team’s only hope rests in a 17-year-old black prospect. To survive the changing world, the team must make a change of its own and break the color barrier. And faith, race, and tradition are put to a test in the face of the shifting world.
Doster knows his subject matter well. His portrait of southern life is both accurate and enchanting. He captures all the drama of baseball: the thrill of the win, the heartbreak of the loss, and even the bewilderment felt when fans become lackadaisical.
More importantly, Doster recognizes that baseball can serve as a corrolary for society. Through baseball's struggles to deal with modernization, the southern town’s own struggles are reflected. And through the game’s desires to integrate, readers can see how tough integration was for the entire country. In many ways America's pasttime reveals the challenges faced by America.
The novel is a must-read for fans of sports, historical fiction, societal studies, or even southern portraits. The other nominees for one of Christian fiction’s top prizes this year are stiff competition for Doster's book. With Blue Hole Back Home by Joy Jordan-Lake and Rain Song by Alice J. Wisler as the other finalists in the category, Doster is in some imposing company. It is not clear who will be the top writer. What is clear is that it Doster's book is drawing attention. From athletes and sports writers to literary critics and journalists, Safe at Home is making a move to steal the summer reading spotlight, with both its southern charm and its gripping racial history lesson.
As Atlanta Brave’s broadcaster Pete Van Wieren put it, “It is a moving and, at times, heart-breaking story of a small Southern town stubbornly resisting change in the 1950s and a minor league baseball player caught in the crossfire. The baseball scenes ring with authenticity, and so does Doster’s portrait of a small Southern town in the 1950s. After reading Safe at Home, you will come away with a better understanding of what black players truly experienced when the color barriers in baseball began to fall.”
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