Vendor
	Foundry Claire Harris
Original language
English
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Fiction & Related items

GODS OF WOOD AND STONE

Mark Di Ionno

From Pulitzer Prize finalist Mark Di Ionno comes the next Great Novel - The Natural with echoes of Ford, Updike, DeLillo and Roth - two men from disparate worlds and their search for what constitutes a meaningful life in a searing portrait of honor and masculinity, sport and celebrity, marriage and parenthood.

Joe Grudeck is a living legend - a first-ballot Hall of Famer beloved by Boston Red Sox fans who once played for millions under the bright Fenway lights. Now, he finds himself haunted by his own history, searching for connection in a world that's alienated the true person behind his celebrity facade. He'll step back into the spotlight once more with a very risky Cooperstown acceptance speech that has the power to change everything - except the darkness in his past.

Horace Mueller is a different type altogether - working in darkness at a museum blacksmith shop and living in a rundown farmhouse on the outskirts of Cooperstown, New York. He clings to an anachronistic lifestyle, fueled by nostalgia for simpler times and a rebellion against the sport-celebrity lifestyle of Cooperstown, struggling to bring his baseball prodigy son to his side.

GODS OF WOOD AND STONE is the story of these two men - framed by the lens of baseball, a timeless, but strikingly singular tale of the responsibilities of manhood and the pitfalls of glory in a painful and exhilarating novel.

Mark Di Ionno is a lifelong journalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist. He is a front-page columnist for The Star-Ledger, and its online partner nj.com. He began his career as a sportswriter for the New York Post. He is an adjunct professor of journalism at Rutgers University.

Available products
Book Published 2018-07-17 by Touchstone
Book Published 2018-07-17 by Touchstone

Comments

A riveting story of baseball, pop culture, nostalgia, masculinity, and so much more, Mark Di Ionno's Gods of Wood and Stone is pure heat from a veteran at the top of his game.

Di Ionno starkly portrays a dangerous and frightening passion for violence that too often has become synonymous with the expression of the... male psyche.

As a sportswriter, sports columnist, at-large columnist and now an accomplished author, Mark Di Ionno has succeeded because he shares his sharp and unafraid probings of life and lives beneath their exteriors. Gods of Wood and Stone is rough, tough and thoughtful, blending his considerable abilities.

Framed against a backdrop of baseball and a life of land and country, this is a novel of nostalgia vs. progress, of grind vs. instant gratification, of lasting glory vs. Twitter celebrity. Delivered with a fan's passion, a journalist's eye for detail, and the unblinking courage of a storyteller, Mark Di Ionno knocks it out of the park with this piercing literary thriller, Gods of Wood and Stone.

Engrossing from the first page, this clear-eyed and atmospheric novel hurtled me through a roller coaster of emotions - from curiosity to outrage to relief. How are American men raised to think about fame, talent, hard work, and women? What happens when two men with opposing worldviews get in each other's way? Gods of Wood and Stone raises important questions of our time.

Gods of Wood and Stone isn't a baseball novel; it's a story of what really afflicts American men: disappointment. Mark Di Ionno is a gifted writer and renders his characters in ways both ruthless and empathetic. You won't forget Joe Grudeck. Or Horace Mueller. They live. They stay with you. They want you to know: what we learn of our heroes hurts less than what they learn of themselves.