THE SWITCHEROO: A Novel
Date
2016-01-07
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Publisher
MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa
Abstract
My novel concerns family conflict. The father, Jack, has lost his wife and son
in childbirth. His surviving daughter, Bonnie, is his dead son’s twin. An alcoholic,
Jack’s depression over his losses, results in neglecting Bonnie, raised by her grandparents
to age seven where the story begins.
Jack had been a star college baseball pitcher whose injury kept him from playing
in the majors. He had put all his hopes on having a son to coach, who might succeed
where he had lost his chance to pitch in the majors. Since the tragedy of his lost wife,
Lydia, and his still-born son, Jack had spent the past seven years coaching high school
baseball teams to State Championships allowing little time for Bonnie.
When his in-laws invite Jack to Bonnie’s seventh birthday party, Jack challenges
Bonnie with a wager that she can’t blow out all the candles on her cake with one breath.
When she succeeds, she holds Jack to his wager that he will play catch with her. The dark
tone of the story shifts to hope through their shared dream, that he can turn her into the
pitcher he had hoped her twin brother might have been. Their dream congeals with
Bonnie’s hope to develop into a closing pitcher in the World Series.
From age seven to eighteen, we share their dreams and disappointments of Jack
coaching Bonnie, who is driven by an internal spiritual force that she has thought since
her early childhood has comes from her twin brother. Even at eighteen, she believes
Junior’s name embossed on the baseball mitt meant for him provides her with the magic
to throw an unhittable pitch she calls, “the switcheroo.” The theme of gender equality is
the essence of this narrative as Bonnie attempts to break the invisible, unspoken gender
line in the Boys Club called Major League Baseball.
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Keywords
Novel, Family, Conflict, Gender equality