Back in the Game

By Charles Holdefer

When a new job takes Stanley Mercer to the small town of Legion, he expects a peacful country life. Not shotgun pellets in his kitchen wallpaper, methamphetamine addicts knocking on his door, and the stench of hog lot lagoons. Falling in love with a married woman doesn't simplify matters either.

Sex in secret leads to more than he'd bargained for. Stanley is a schoolteacher, and his lover, Amy Rawlings, is the mother of one of his pupils. Amy is trong-minded and defends hat she wants, not just for herself and for her methamphetamine-addicted husband, but also for her child, Ginny. It is a delicate and volatile situation.

While trying to keep up appearances, Stanley also becomes involved in the struggles of Jim and Christine Snow, two children in the special education program at his school, and he befriends Nelson, an angry divorced father. These people need him, and he needs them, in ways that will surprise and challenge Stanley.

Ultimately, Stanley Mercer must decide how much he will accommodate the everyday lies, the awkward truths, and the risks involved when respectable adults behave badly - including himself. Because the most vulnerable people in Legion are its children.

Humorous, poignant, and uncompromising, Back in the Game is the story of rural America in the era of globalization, a place where the old cliches of country life no longer apply, but the yearnings for connection, for community and for love still run strong.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Permanent Press
• Release date: Jun 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9781579622657

Book preview

5:9–10

NOTEBOOK ONE

Dancing

y first day as a respectable American again, I rode the school bus. I hadn’t planned to be a rider, but my car broke down. The mechanic took me by the arm like a doctor consoling a relative; I felt sad at the sight of my machine bleeding oil; I caught the phrase complete overhaul, and we shook our heads. I couldn’t afford to fix it. I was still waiting for my first paycheck.

So I rode the bus. I’d rented a farmhouse full of mice along the river, and that morning the bus picked me up and I joined the country kids. There were boys with fresh haircuts, girls in knee socks, chattering in groups as the bus bumped along the gravel roads. I watched the land drift by my window. Hillocks of alfalfa, patches of bare black earth; corn in the flats. There weren’t many flats. Most of the countryside was rolling, feminine.

The bus pulled down a dirt lane and the riders fell quiet. They looked out the windows. This was the farm, I would soon learn, of Jimbo Snow.

It was a tiny house, with peeling paint, on an overgrown lawn. Half a dog protruded from under the front steps. The bus honked and the screen door flew open. There stood a thickset girl with glasses. She took slow steps toward the bus, cautious steps, as if afraid the lawn was full of snakes. "Christine! My darling! cried a boy with scraggly sideburns, and all the children laughed. Christine came to the bus and made her way up the steps and immediately sat in the front seat next to the door, her back to the rest of the children. Some younger boys made smooching sounds and picked up the cry of Darling Christine! to the rousing approval of most of the riders. The white-haired bus driver did nothing. Then the boy with scraggly sideburns chanted Jimbo, Jimbo, Jimbo, the cry of a pep rally, and everyone’s attention returned to the bus windows, and to the house. A shadow appeared in the door frame. Jimbo, Jimbo, Jimbo" went the crowd, until a tall kid in denim emerged in the sunlight. He pounded down the front steps. The dog disappeared. The kid advanced across the lawn with long, deliberate strides, clenching a pencil in his fist and it seemed that he had a purpose, a definite object in mind, as he entered the school bus and faced the crowd, his head almost touching the metal ceiling. For a moment the riders hushed. His eyes glistened, his slim mouth fell open, but there was no sound: only movement, his chin, swinging back and forth. I couldn’t help but stare with everyone else. The bus jolted, he sat down with Christine.

We continued down gravel roads, spewing dust, and soon came into town where we were let off at Legion Community School. On my way out I told the bus driver, Catch you later, and he gestured for me to wait. He adjusted his glasses and clicked on a fat hearing aid that curled behind his ear.

There, that’s better, he said. My name is Russell.

I exchanged a few words with Russell and then entered the school, a building of brick and wood and aluminum, representing a variety of construction projects over the years. My classroom was in the brick section, which was a little rundown but agreeable for its large windows and smell of fresh wax. The high ceiling was a maze of exposed pipes, twisting this way and that, like the ventricles of a massive brain that we had taken possession of.

Don’t be afraid, come on in, I told pupils in the hallway, who eyed me curiously, clutching their binders and book-bags. Take a desk.

From the moment the bell rang, I didn’t have time to be nervous. The morning went swiftly with Math and Earth Science, a nosebleed, and one incredibly shy little girl who refused to tell me her name. Her classmates revealed her secret, however—Ginny Rawlings—and her face reddened.

You mean you didn’t know? she said hoarsely.

Believe me, I told her. There’s a lot I don’t know.

At lunch I escorted them to the cafeteria and then went to sit with my fellow teachers, most of whom I hadn’t met. Our break was only thirty-five minutes and this fact weighed palpably on the conversations. Lunch was less a time for relaxation than a pit stop for refueling. Jaws worked in flex, and conversations came in bursts:

Good summer?

Mmmm. You?

Worked on the house. New deck.

Kit?

Mmmm. Gazebo, too.

No way!

I gulped with them and glanced up in time to see the minute hand of a large overhead clock jerk forward and then stop, trembling. Its broad, flat face was encased in a protective wire mesh because this space also served as the elementary school gymnasium. Basketball hoops hung at each end and on the backboards, in gleaming golden paint, appeared the unmistakable silhouettes of pigs.

How was your morning? asked Nelson, stirring his spoon in a cup. He was a large man who drank only coffee for lunch and taught art. We’d met a few days earlier when I’d been issued my keys.

Fine, I said.

I remember my first day on the job. I was scraping clay off the ceiling. Mrs. Heffernan’s kids aren’t giving you too much trouble, are they?

No, they’re all right.

Mrs. Heffernan was my predecessor who, I’d been informed, had died over the summer. Her desk had been emptied before my arrival and the contents were put in several cartons beside it, with her name scrawled in magic marker. This morning I’d noticed pupils staring at the cartons, and I wondered how to get this stuff out of sight.

You have any trouble, you just let me know, said a grey lady in a sleeveless dress, leaning into the conversation. Her naked arms were freckled and muscular, her face broad and tan.

I thanked her, pretending to remember who she was. We’d been introduced the same day I’d met Nelson, but her name hadn’t sunk in. Now I felt her gaze on me, sizing me up.

Most of your kids were in my class last year, she said. They’re not a bad bunch. You should do fine. If you keep them interested, discipline will take care of itself. That’s the secret.

I flap my arms and fly around the room, Nelson said. That always works.

A young woman carried a tray to our table and sat down. She nodded in greeting to the group while shaking out her paper napkin. She paused at me.

You’re the new one, she said. You’re Stanley Mercer.

That’s right, and you’re—

Shana. I was new here last year.

As she spoke she tore a roll in half, eating with her pink fingers. She started carefully, politely enough—but soon began to wolf it. I asked her what she taught.

Special education, she said.

Oh, then you must know Jimbo.

His name is James, she corrected me, swallowing. James Snow. The other children call him Jimbo, and he doesn’t like it.

I almost told her about my bus ride, but then decided not to. It wouldn’t sound right. She explained that Christine struggled less than James, who was more timid, too. Their mother was bringing up the kids by herself, and she had her hands full.

Your job sounds tough, but it must be rewarding, I said.

People like to say that. She shrugged, jabbing with her fork. Mainly, a person has to learn to set up the good parts. That’s what I’ve figured out, so far.

The table rattled; Nelson lumbered off, twisting his neck to the side, and it gave an audible pop.

The problem is, she added as the bell rang, the other kids still think mine are monsters.

I taught reading that afternoon and it was hot. Opening the windows made little difference, for this end-of-summer season offered no breeze. Some kids fidgeted, others rubbed their eyes, sleepy. Minutes crawled and I had to change the seating arrangement because a boy named Ty Carson was pestering Ester Xicay, a dark little bucktoothed girl who brought up the end of my class list. Ty made furtive blue ink marks on the back of Ester’s neck. So I moved him to the front where I could keep an eye on him and for the rest of the afternoon he entertained himself by picking at a scab on his palm till it bled and left a spot on the front of his shirt, which I pretended not to see. Finally the day ended and he and the rest of my class escaped, and I erased the blackboard with a sense of relief.

Before locking up, I decided to move the cartons beside my desk marked Mrs. Heffernan to a less conspicuous place. A corner by the radiator would serve just fine. The first carton I carried over, but for the remaining two cartons I got lazy and starting pushing at them with my foot, sliding them across the floor. I wasn’t paying much attention until the top carton toppled to the side with a crash.

Damn!

I didn’t like the sound of the impact. Too many rattles. I was bending over to inspect the damage when a voice said to me, "Hellooo. A little accident here?"

It was the grey lady with freckled arms, striding toward me. Without missing a beat I picked up the carton and carried it to the radiator, set it down gently, and then returned to retrieve the last carton, which I put on top of the pile. Yeah. Just trying to get some of this stuff out of the way and it tipped over.

She launched into a conversation, welcoming me and thrusting a baking tin into my hands. Her name was Patricia Gordon, she said. (You didn’t seem to remember me at lunch today. Call me Patty.) She’d taught here twenty-eight years. She was sure I’d like it. "And those, she said, are my chocolate walnut squares."

She smelled of lilacs, and there was no doubting her friendly intentions, although she addressed me in the animated tones of the classroom. She was still switched ON. She announced that if I ever needed anything I should get in touch with her or her husband Roger. He knew everyone in the district, had served on the school board. He could take me pheasant hunting. Squeezing my arm, she asked me questions.

What made you come to Legion?

I tried to think of a good answer. A good lie.

It’s a prime place, I said. Quality of life is what it comes down to, don’t you think? I’ve always wanted to live in the country.

Are you married?

She looked at me with unblinking eyes. Suddenly I suspected that she saw right through me.

No, I said. I live alone.

I excused myself before she asked a question that I would regret answering. Outside, the other buses had left, but my fellow riders were still waiting. The smaller children ran around on the grass in frenetic circles, as if crazed, going nowhere. A boy explained to me that Russell was usually late because he worked at The Sportsman’s Corner until three-thirty. I sat on the steps in the shade, where I could feel the cool concrete through the seat of my pants. Christine and James came out and sat down, close to me. They had doughy faces and oily skin; I realized it would take a while to get used to them. James still clutched his pencil, and he playfully tapped one of Christine’s soft peach knees. I heard her say, Scratch my back, Jim, I can’t reach it.

He leaned over and raked her back with his fingers.

I slid closer to them.

Hello Christine, Jim. Would you like a chocolate walnut square?

Christine seemed pleased; she took one and thanked me. She nudged her brother. Take one, she said. So he did. We chewed them and I began a conversation, "Well Jim," which was interrupted when the bus pulled up and the doors popped open.

The smaller children scrambled and we followed them in step. I noticed that Jim had a piece of chocolate in the corner of his mouth, clinging to the edge of his lips, like a fat black fly. It bothered me. It was conspicuous, and I wanted him to wipe the spot off before the other children saw it. Been eatin’ shit again? I could hear them say. I stared at the chocolate and was tempted to reach out and flick it away. He saw me looking at him. When I averted my eyes, he suddenly spoke.

Why do you call me Jim?

There was suspicion in his voice.

Isn’t that your name?

He began to speak and then stopped; began again and stopped. His hesitation was not as if he couldn’t find his words; rather, it seemed the words were too great to get out. His throat convulsed and a tiny trace of saliva slipped to his lips, hanging there for an excruciating second, until he wiped it off with the back of his hand. The chocolate went with it. He turned and boarded the bus. Christine thrust herself between us, quite boldly, using her bulk in a protective manner. She climbed the steps and left me with the sight of her broad hips and pale blonde head. I followed and went past Russell, who now wore sunglasses and a baseball cap. He tipped his cap to me, which I found vaguely distressing. I nodded to him.

The riders were subdued until we went down the rutted lane. Then, as if on cue, all attention was focused on Jim and Christine. A chorus of "Bye Bye Jimbo and Bye Darling Christine! filled the bus, along with an accompaniment of smooching sounds. They got off and the doors closed with a smack. The bus backed away from the house, and suddenly, a new cry went up. Children began to lean out of windows and point. We were passing a garden and a line of rabbit cages that bordered the lane. There he is! It’s Billy! There he is! I saw a blond child in cut-off denim shorts. He had been hiding behind the rabbit cages. Now he panicked at the voices, he raced through the garden rows and tripped, kicking up a spray of dirt clods. His chin skidded on the ground. He pulled himself out of the tangle, assaulted by the school bus bedlam of Billy! Billy!" and went crashing into the stalks of corn, and disappeared.

My God, I said. Who was that?

That’s Billy Snow, said a boy. He seemed overjoyed. He’s the one who doesn’t talk or go to school. They say he twists off the heads of rabbits and it’s true. It’s true!

The bus dropped me off at my farmhouse. Russell backed out of the driveway, and before going to my door, I reached inside my mailbox, my hand stirring the air.

No letters today.

SOME NIGHTS after school I took a portable grill and charcoal bricks to the river’s edge and broiled a pork chop and drank beer. I listened to a Chicago ball game on a radio, slapped mosquitoes. Later I threw the burnt charcoal into the river and watched it steam and hiss.

I had plenty of time to think. I’d spent the first part of my childhood in a small town which was not so very different from Legion, a place with a central square of flat-roofed buildings and a grain elevator and starlings that perched on telephone poles, scolding you when you walked by. They left pasty droppings on parking meters.

But I’d been out of the country—and I don’t mean these cornfields and silos, I mean E Pluribus, the United States—for fourteen years. Pursuing a childhood dream.

While my family moved to the suburbs and everybody else of my generation was getting mortgages and having kids and settling down, I’d been trying to improve my throwing arm. Experimenting with my batting stance. Adapting to injuries. I was a baseball player. That might sound like an unlikely career to pursue abroad but it was true. I started out in the U.S., but discovered that dreams don’t respect borders.

After a sports scholarship in college I was picked in the pro draft, and moved quickly from Class A to Eastern League to AAA in Indianapolis. This was a time of great hope, of hovering possibility, a time when anything good that happened seemed like my due. Stanley Mercer was going places—naturally! I was slow to see other forces, and utterly unprepared when injuries pushed me back and my career stalled, when people began to doubt my future. But I stayed true to my dream, because I knew that I must be right, even if it involved certain adjustments along the way, delays in my ultimate success. I accepted my first foreign contract in a Mexican league, and kept working and practicing. This was followed by winter ball in Las Macias, Dominican Republic, and then in a nowdefunct European league.

I ended my playing days barnstorming and playing exhibitions for the Paris Buffaloes. A life devoted to my dream, never giving up—nobody ever accused this Stanley of not hustling—and now, in the fading summer, this is where I found myself: Legion, Iowa.

Standing by the muddy river, I smelled the last bloom of prairie summer in the air, and I still couldn’t quite believe it.

ONLY A month earlier I’d been beside a pumping ocean with wind off the cliffs. My girlfriend Delphine and I had joined my boss, Monsieur Chedin, and his family at their vacation home in Tauzé-le-Mignon.

At that time I was still trying to ingratiate myself and save my job. My plan was to persuade my boss about the merits of playing baseball in the summer. It seemed obvious to me. But Monsieur Chedin was against the idea, because that was when the French went on holiday.

But that’s precisely the point, I told him, extracting an olive pit from my mouth and tossing it in a bush, there’ll be more people with the free time to come see us—we’d be a leisure attraction. Soccer is dead in August. People get tired of the beach. We could offer an alternative. That’s when we should play our exhibitions. It’s money waiting to be made.

Chedin scratched his chin, shook his head. He didn’t want

Reviews for Back in the Game

[krisa_41 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I didn't like this book much.There's no real development of characters, which makes it hard to care about them. The story, what there is of it, is all surface. There's no plot development to speak of.

[readingfiend_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I kept waiting for the story that was writing on inside cover, but it just didn't materialize. Stanley comes home to the United States after playing baseball in Europe and a relationship ended (all talked about briefly). His brother, wife and kids have no room for him and his mother is in a new relationship so no one wants to take him in. He applies for and is hired by a small town in Iowa to teach (however he's a few credits short of a degree so he just lies a little about that).It's a town troubled by meth factories and addicts. He begins an "affair" with the mother of one of his students. He interacts with children who have a troubled home life - but I'm not really sure because the author really didn't go into that and when he did, you wouldn't hear about them again for a few chapters.I think there was just too much going on. I didn't connect with any of the characters and didn't really like any of them either.

[joycebl · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I found this book to be boring. Nothing happens in it and I asked myself several times as I read, why did he write this book? I kept waiting for a conflict, for tension, for character development, for some of the story threads to go somewhere, but none of that happened. He describes relationships but does not offer enough information to understand behavior or motivation, so we are left questioning why certain characters acted as they did. I began to think that the big pig farm would end up being the evil capitalistic faceless enterprise that would destroy the environment and make everyone sick, but that story line petered out into nothing. Then I thought that his relationship with the intellectually disabled children he is interested in would create difficulty for him, but nothing happened there either. I consider this book a waste of my time.

[mojomomma_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I really enjoyed this book, it is very true to small-town Iowa life. The main character is a washed up semi-pro baseball player who ends up teaching in a small-town Iowa school because nothing better comes up, and he only had to lie on the form about the fact that he hadn't QUITE earned his bachelor's degree. He gets involved in the lives of his students and the community until it is discovered and he admits that he doesn't have that college degree.

[orteacher · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Back in the Game quickly grabbed my attention and held it the entire book. I felt empathy for Stanley and his travails as he starts teaching in a small town in Iowa and encounters various dating situations as he tries to settle into a new life. The book reads quickly and is entertaining but is quite short at just over 200 pages. I found myself wanting more of author Charles Holdefer. Tell me more about the ecological disaster at the giant pig farm and how is that going to effect Stanley. How is it that the special ed kids Stanley meets become his friends? Why did the very reserved Beverly suddenly warm up from frigid to hot? And after she tells him that the ball is in his court why just end the story at that point? So while I liked everything I read, I would have liked him to go farther in several areas.

[mclane_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

"Back in the Game" is a pleasant, well-written novel about a former minor league baseball player who sort of stumbles into a job as an elementary school teacher in a small Iowa town. The author writes with wit , but the characters are underdeveloped, and nothing much really happens. I was somewhat disappointed that several promising story lines just sort of peter out, as does, in the end, the novel itself.

[zmagic69 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was the perfect type of book to read in the summer. The story was light and fun and a very quick read. It is the story of a man named Stanley Mercer would can seem to find his place in the 21st century, after riding his dream to be a pro baseball player as far as he could resorting to playing the game in France of all places. After losing that job and his girlfriend Stanley moves back to America and realizes he is not qualified to really do anything, ironically he winds up as a teacher in a small farm town in Iowa. What happens during his one year of teaching is the bulk of the story and how decisions and actions taken by Stanley affect those around him.

[brigitte64 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I really enjoyed this book. I liked the words and the way the author described things. The main character Stanley is not the great or mean guy, no hero and no whimp, but the story was well written and I had fun reading it even with no real big drama or climax.

[briannad84 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I really enjoyed this book! It had a nice small-town midwestern feel to it (takes place in Iowa) and reminded me alot of where I currently live. Meth is problem here in Missouri too unfortunately. It didn't focus too much on baseball which I liked, but I wish he would have been able to keep his teaching job at the end! I was a bit disappointed in the ending. And I would have liked to have seen a little more of the Snows. I liked their characters alot. A great book and short and sweet!

[hairball_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Back in the Game is another one of those books about a man floundering towards middle age without a clue. Fortunately, he's not a hipster, distinguishing this book from the bunch that's proliferated over the past couple of years (the middle-age fail male novel). This is more like an old-style Richard Russo book, but without quite as much humor or driving action. It would make a better Richard Ford short story, or perhaps one by Tom McGuane--yeah, that's it. What Back in the Game really lacks is any sort of real crisis or climax. Some little things go wrong, but little things go wrong all throughout the book--there's no turning point. The very, very end of the novel (as in, the last few pages) seem to provide something for the character...but it's just weird, in context. The novel is structured as a series of notebooks, but the notebooks aren't given individual arcs, either. I'm not usually so picky about this stuff, but I felt let down by this book, and I wanted to figure out why. The book's blurb is also misleading: it suggests that Stanley, the protagonist, will become entangled with certain other characters in a serious way, but like much else in this novel, that relationship remains on the surface. Finally, why does the reader not know Stanley's brother and sister-in-law are having a baby until the end of the book, when the SIL's well-progressed pregnancy is mentioned? We haven't heard about it, so why isn't Stanley surprised? An innocuous, not unpleasant, read...but ultimately not satisfying. Re-read Straight Man, or read it for the first time.

[illiniguy71 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The plot concerns an unmarried adult man who has been out in the world for some years and who, in need of a job, takes a public school teaching position in a small town in southern Iowa. Having grown up in Chicago and having been a professional athlete in Europe, he looks forward to bucolic peace. Instead, he finds all the problems of today's rural Midwest and of America's family breakdown.This is quite a good little novel--funny but convincing, easy to read but with a message both subtle and serious. This reviewer has spent most of the last decade in the general region in which the novel is set. Both the issues which arise in the novel and the way characters react to them are fully typical of the region. The book is both thought-provoking and fun to read.

[msnick_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

With both his long-term relationship and his minor league baseball career over, Stanley Mercer finds himself the as the new (and under-qualified) teacher in the Midwest town of Legion, after 14 years abroad. Stanley is a lost soul - someone who doesn't know where his life's journey will take him, let alone where he WANTS it to take him. Legion brings into Stanley's life an eclectic cast of characters: a trio of outcast children, a married love interest, the widower of the teacher whose job Stanley now holds, and a few work "friends" that Stanley can barely tolerate, among others, all of whom help add to the bleakness of his days in this dead-end town. On page 119 of the ARE edition, while thinking about his affair with Amy, a married woman and mother to one of his students, an introspective Stanley contemplates, "I'd come to recognize in Amy a restless vanity that I'd always posses myself. Maybe that was what we really shared. It wasn't a good quality but it wasn't the sort of thing you could easily control: a nagging sense that your real life wasn't the one you were living but was waiting for you somewhere else; your real life hadn't quite begun yet."I enjoyed Charles Holdefer's prose and would like to read more of his work. Back in the Game was a well-written glimpse into the life of a man trying to find himself in a stagnating small town.

[anyanwubutler · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Finished 4/4/13.Meh. I finished reading the book only because it’s short. The main character is painfully unlikeable and so are almost all the other characters. Set in a small town in Iowa, there are meth heads and the last tenants in the main character’s house made and dealt meth. There’s a factory pig farm in the neighborhood, and some small farms left, but not many.“I’d come to recognize in Amy a restless vanity that I’d always possessed myself. Maybe that was what we really shared. It wasn’t a good quality but it wasn’t the sort of thing you could easily control: a nagging sense that your real life wasn’t the one you were living but was waiting for you somewhere else; your real life hadn’t quite begun yet.” (119) Thanks for the ARC Library Thing, which I received 6/4/12. Hopefully, I'll like the next one I get a lot more.

[dekesolomon · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Charles Holdefer's little novel, Back in the Game, is a deceptively simple book. Outwardly it's a slice-of-life story. Across the book's 212 pages, protagonist Stanley Mercer lays out a first-person narrative of his experience during the year he spent teaching school in rural Iowa. Look a little closer, one finds that Back in the Game is a bildungsroman.Protagonist Stanley was a high-school baseball star. After he graduated, he was drafted into AAA league professional baseball. Coaches and trainers soon learned that Stanley was pretty good but could not and never would play on ESPN. He was dropped from AAA and sent down into a succession of lesser positions. He soon found himself playing in Mexican leagues and then (lowest of the low) playing for an exhibition team that barnstormed Europe, promoting the game to audiences that had never seen it. Finally Stanley was dropped from that position and dropped by his French girlfriend from what he had hoped was a lasting relationship.So what does a 35-year-old, high-school baseball player do when nobody will pay him to play ball and his girlfriend doesn't want him? Stanley made his way back to the States where he landed with no prospects whatever. In Chicago, Stanley's brother's wife eagerly helped him get aboard a temp agency that placed him as a substitute teacher at an elementary school in the fictitious town of Legion, Iowa.Stanley left Chicago and moved to Iowa in a used car that slowly fell apart as he drove. When he got to Legion, he found himself confronted by five facts: 1) He had no money; 2) his car was dead; 3) he had no place to live; 4) his new job didn't promise much fun; 5) he didn't know where he could get his wick dipped. The rest of the book tells how circumstances solved Stanley's problems by forcing him live without a parent or a coach or a sympathy dispenser.Of course one either likes this kind of stuff or one does not. Consider Back in the Game one way, it's boring. Nobody in this book gets killed, kidnapped, raped or beaten. Nobody robs any banks or blows up any buildings or contracts any hideous diseases or wins the love of his/her life. Considered another way, 'Back in the Game' is a pretty good story. Author Holdefer in this book defines the worth of individuals by their interactions in human situations. Characters cope (or not) with mental retardation, meth casualties, nosey neighbors, lakanooky, bossy relatives, drunken friends, small-town ballgames, cheating spouses, picnics, parent-teacher conferences, church gatherings and religious affiliation, hog factories, divorce courts, office politics – you name it, Legion throws it at the characters in this book.So even though there's no mystery solved, no romance, almost no violence and very little suspense, this novel works as fiction because it dramatizes the lives of 'normal' people like you, your friends and your neighbors. Sentient readers will surely find someone in Holdefer's Iowa with whom they can identify.Sizing up Holdefer as a wordsmith, I'll say he's pretty good but not fully ripe. He's good at defining characters with action and dialog. Readers pretty quick learn that Amy is a full-time liar and, when she's angry, a hot-mouthed bitch. Nelson is a 2000-milligram pill all day every day. Readers learn such things by reading dialog. Holdefer isn't much on physical descriptions or labeling. "Show-don't-tell" is the good stylist's mantra and it is everywhere apparent and effective in Holdefer's prose. All the author told me about Amy's looks is that she's slender, has dark hair and a tight, shapely butt. In other words, he told me just enough to let my imagination fill the in-betweens and he's good at doing that, too.Among the things I feel Holdefer does wrong: he introduces readers to characters we don't need to know. On page 12, for example, Stanley introduces us to a bus driver:Stanley: “He adjusted his glasses and clicked on a fat hearing aid that curled behind his ear.”Bus Driver: “There, that's better. My name is Russell.”Stanley: “I exchanged a few words with Russell and then entered the school. . . .”And that's all we ever hear from Russell. He never says a thing through the remainder of the book. And though, late in the novel, Russell makes an ass of himself by running down some domestic rabbits with his school bus, he never factors into the story at all. Why not just leave Russell out of this? As it is he's just one more name to remember but he serves no useful purpose.Another item: Holdefer's prose is sometimes so spare that readers don't get all they need. On page 21-2, for instance, Stanley's French girlfriend suddenly gets pissed off. She jumps in her car and takes off so fast she nearly runs Stanley down. Left sitting by the side of the road on a warm day, Stanley nods out under a tree. A few minutes later he snaps awake. Stanley tells:“I recall a violent sensation of being dislocated, stronger than any I'd ever known. I blinked and sat up and brushed twigs off my elbow, like a man who'd fallen out of the sky. . . . My mouth opened and a low cry escaped. I believed it utterly impossible to return to my old assumptions.”Stanley experienced some kind of epiphany under that tree but of what Stanley suddenly realized, we are left uninformed. If Holdefer isn't going to detail Stanley's epiphany, why bother to mention it? How are we supposed to factor Stanley's mysterious revelation into all that follows? The short answer is that we can't. And once isn't enough: Holdefer pulls the same trick later in the book, when Stanley's widowed mother gets remarried.Some might hold it's a small thing, that circumstances in which the revelations occur clue readers to their nature. Maybe they are clues (I certainly took them that way) but I find it annoying. When the lights come on, I like to be able to see. Otherwise, I might still trip over the furniture.Solomon sez: Back in the Game has some minor flaws but it surely does not stink. Those who like touchy-feely memoirs from the annals of our therapeutic culture will like Back in the Game. I hereby award Mr. Holdefer three stars for taking a fair whack at a coming-of-age romance. Most of those who read it will find it worth their while.

[lukes_171461 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"Back in the Game" packs a solid punch – it’s full of awkward and endearing humanity – with its straight-ahead style and character-driven plot. How some authors work so much believability and sympathy in a slim volume is completely beyond me. This book oddly shares an impressive heart, and a comfortable, reasonable approach to life that belies the desperation of some of its characters.Stanley Mercer, a former pro ballplayer, has come home to America from France, where he was trying unsuccessfully to find funding for a barnstorming baseball tour. His influential brother secures him a teaching job at an elementary school in Iowa, and Stanley finds himself trying to make sense of it all. He scarcely believes it. Not one to dwell too much dashed dreams, he discharges his new responsibilities reasonably well, making a pretty good teacher for the year, particularly since he never quite got his bachelor’s degree. He becomes involved with one or two families during the year, and one of them, the Rawlingses, is headed by Reggie, who is unfortunately a meth addict. As always, addicts are unpredictable while high, and Stanley has to deal with the raging Reggie, who may or may not know the extent of Stanley’s involvement with his wife, Amy.Mr. Holdefer constructs his tale with his protagonist’s point of view once removed from the action that propels the story. His first-person narration captures for us the fairly routine events of the young teacher’s life, but the characters he encounters provide the drama and narrative energy. Through it all, we the lucky readers are treated to pitch-perfect portrayals of resilient small-town Iowans. As Stanley makes his way, the meth plague rears its ugly head, and the large local hog operation sustains an emergency hazardous spill. Events, never under Stanley’s control to begin with, spiral even further outside his ambit: his supposed girlfriend, half a day away in Chicago, may or may not have plans that include him. The local woman he dallies with turns out to be an adversary as events unfold, largely because her daughter is in Stanley’s class, and her husband is the meth addict.I recommend this book to readers of literate fiction for its unique structure, for its finely-observed humanity, and for its big heart.

[nancyjak · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I kept waiting for the story that was writing on inside cover, but it just didn't materialize. Stanley comes home to the United States after playing baseball in Europe and a relationship ended (all talked about briefly). His brother, wife and kids have no room for him and his mother is in a new relationship so no one wants to take him in. He applies for and is hired by a small town in Iowa to teach (however he's a few credits short of a degree so he just lies a little about that).It's a town troubled by meth factories and addicts. He begins an "affair" with the mother of one of his students. He interacts with children who have a troubled home life - but I'm not really sure because the author really didn't go into that and when he did, you wouldn't hear about them again for a few chapters.I think there was just too much going on. I didn't connect with any of the characters and didn't really like any of them either.