Summary
One Fine Season tells the inspirational story of a promising young athlete who must rise from the ashes of devastating personal loss to fulfill a pact made years earlier with his best friend. The book uses baseball as the medium of expression for spirituality and ethics, love and selflessness, coping with death, the meaning of true friendship and other universal concepts. The goal was to stretch the reader’s mind while he or she enjoyed an entertaining sports/love story. I hope you find the philosophical discussions interesting, and perhaps even enlightening.
I contemplated writing this book for many years, driven by the desire to, in some small way, honor the memories of two childhood friends who died young. Their names were Danny Dettling and Pete Callinan. Danny and I hung out a lot between the ages of 12 and 14, playing on the same Pop Warner football team and spending summer nights camped out in my parent’s backyard in a blue-green pup tent that we routinely shared with my brother. Danny was always fun to be around and we became close friends. Pete was a fine all-around athlete and excellent baseball player, smooth and stylish, and a good person. Both died in their early 20s, Danny from a terminal illness and Pete following a tragic accident that left him paralyzed. Even now, three decades later, the picture of them remains clear in my mind.
As for future works, I’ve started writing another novel, which takes quite a different turn from One Fine Season. It combines plenty of action with commentary on today’s political situation. My first book was a labor of love. The second will offer a fun way to delve into the concepts of freedom, liberty, self-reliance and integrity in the face of governmental tyranny.
