From Publishers Weekly
A prodigal ballplayer with a passion for physics and higher math and an aging physicist once infatuated with baseball energize Miller's fourth novel, a quirky romp through the mysteries of life, love and science. Benny Rhodes is a disaffected MIT physics professor who, after the death of his colleague and close friend, the brilliant mathematician Arthur Hodges, indulges his wanderlust and ends up living in a trailer park in Needles, Calif., accompanied by "extraordinarily fecund" Becky, with whom he fell in love during an Oklahoma layover. Meanwhile, Henry Spencer, a young paratrooper with only a hazy knowledge of his past, looks to be a rising baseball star-despite his lack of "Organized Ball" experience-and happens also to be an untrained mathematical genius. Henry makes the roster of the Oakland A's, and he settles in with his girlfriend, Ramona, the spunky waitress he met during spring training. But Henry splits midseason when he gets an invitation to visit Needles sent by one of the trailer park's baseball fans, and an unsettling synergy reveals itself as Henry, Benny, Becky and the rest of the oddball characters sit on the edge of the desert-might Henry be Arthur reincarnated? Miller balances his unpredictable plotting with some charming writing on baseball, physics and other mysterious forces, including sweet romantic chapters about the coupling of the characters. The result is a funny, unconventional meditation on the twists and turns of fate from an engaging, thought-provoking writer.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Product Description
ou may think Field of Dreams meets Cocoon, or perhaps The Natural meets Love Story, some may even say that it's Ball Four clashing with Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time. John A. Miller's Coyote Moon is all of these and more. In a gone-to-seed trailer park on the edge of the Mojave Desert, quantam physics runs headlong into reincarnation as the park's highly eccentric residents sit around in the evenings drinking home-brewed beer and asking themselves: Can a young, previously un-heard of rookie baseball player be the latest in a line of reincarnated spirits leading back to Sir Isaac Newton? And in the clubhouse of the Oakland Athletics, the mysterious athlete in question, Henry Spencer, a young North Carolinian with nothing more than a high school education and a fuzzy memory, tries to reconcile Werner Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle with the somewhat less intellectual world of baseball. Coyote Moon, John A. Miller's eagerly awaited fourth novel, will have you laughing with delight and wondering to the very end just who the young Henry Spencer really is, and what, exactly, links him to the most unusual trailer park in Needles, California.
From the Back Cover
Praise for John A. Miller’s Tropical Heat
“It’s all good dirty fun on that stretch of turf where James M. Cain meets John Grisham.”—The Chicago Tribune
“John A. Miller has created a fascinating character in A.G. Farrell . . . violence, sex, a mystery to be solved. Miller has all the ingredients for this fast-moving tale.”
—The Columbia State
“A finely crafted, superbly written novel that deserves wide readership.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“ . . . an old-fashioned novel that offers a fine, affectionate portrait of a small Southern town.”—The Chicago Sun-Times
“A story within a story . . . deserves not just nominations but deserves to bring home the Oscar (or the book equivalent).”—The Anniston Star
“Miller creates an atmosphere of suffocating heat and provincialism without ever sacrificing the mystery’s high tension and rapid-fire pace.” I enjoyed it start to finish.”—Andrew Klavan, bestselling author of True Crime and Don’t Say a Word
“Miller’s talent is in perfect pitch in this intriguing novel.”
—Terry Kay, author of Taking Lottie Home
“It’s all good dirty fun on that stretch of turf where James M. Cain meets John Grisham.”—The Chicago Tribune
“John A. Miller has created a fascinating character in A.G. Farrell . . . violence, sex, a mystery to be solved. Miller has all the ingredients for this fast-moving tale.”
—The Columbia State
“A finely crafted, superbly written novel that deserves wide readership.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“ . . . an old-fashioned novel that offers a fine, affectionate portrait of a small Southern town.”—The Chicago Sun-Times
“A story within a story . . . deserves not just nominations but deserves to bring home the Oscar (or the book equivalent).”—The Anniston Star
“Miller creates an atmosphere of suffocating heat and provincialism without ever sacrificing the mystery’s high tension and rapid-fire pace.” I enjoyed it start to finish.”—Andrew Klavan, bestselling author of True Crime and Don’t Say a Word
“Miller’s talent is in perfect pitch in this intriguing novel.”
—Terry Kay, author of Taking Lottie Home
About the Author
John A. Miller is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Cutdown, Causes of Action, and Tropical Heat. Miller’s Jackson Street and Other Stories won the California Book Award for First Fiction. He lives in Georgia.
