The Sweetheart Season: A Novel - Hardcover

Fowler, Karen Joy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805047379 ISBN 13: 9780805047370

Publisher: Henry Holt & Co, 1996

Synopsis

It's 1947 and America has once again made the world safe for democracy. A can-do optimism governs the land - nowhere more so than in America's heartland, the picture-perfect town of Magrit, Minnesota. Headquarters of one of the nation's largest manufacturers of breakfast cereal, Magrit is also home base to the company's mass-circulation magazine, which each week dispenses kitchen wisdom and housewifely advice to millions of women across the country.
It is 1947 and a woman's place is once more in the home. But in rural Magrit, the boys who marched off to war don't seem to want to come back to make a home. For Magrit's young women, the future is decidedly uncertain.
Until the company founder (and town benefactor) decides to form them into a ball team. What could be better for business than a group of lovely young women wearing the company logo and playing the great American pastime? And if, while on the road, the players should happen to meet up with eligible young men, so much the better.
And so the Sweetwheat Sweethearts were born.
This is the story of that team.
But is it?
Told many years after the events by a team member's grown but rebellious daughter, it is a tale of the buoyant forties as reconstructed by a child of the suspicious sixties, a young woman who finds the world of her mother's youth to good to be true: too generous, too innocent, too wedded to happy endings.
Who are we to credit, then, for the odd spins and curious twists that surface in her story - the mother, or her doubting daughter? Little by little as the tale is told, Magrit's slow and steady ways come a cropper. Ghosts are seen. Mistrust is sown. And hearts break.

About this title

Review

Though most men had returned to their hometowns after World War II, few came back to the tiny village of Magrit, Minnesota. Irini, a nineteen year-old woman, works in the Scientific Kitchen at Margaret Mill, a cereal factory, with most of Magrit's other eligible bachelorettes. Hoping to promote his business and attract some suitors for his staff, the owner of the mill forms a women's baseball team called the Sweetwheat Sweethearts. Irini, who wields a fearsome throwing arm, strong from kneading bread dough, is the team's star center fielder and her successes, failures, and revelations on and off the ball field are endearingly recalled by her now grown daughter.

From the Publisher

Excerpts from reviews of Karen Joy Fowler's The Sweetheart
Season

"Ms. Fowler's willingness to take detours, her unapologetic delight in the
odd historical fact, her shadowy humor, and the elegant unruliness of her
language all elevate her story from the picaresque to the grand."

--The New York Times Book Review

"A combination of inquiry, skepticism, and sympathy voiced with a zany
appeal, a hint of magic...Its flavor is tart, comic, and unreliable."

--The Los Angeles Times

"Smart, wry, and just this side of insane...A remarkable
treasure...Enchanting."

--The Washington Post

"The Sweetheart Season is the sort of novel that makes the reader
want to meet the author....The characters are entertaining and
well-defined. The plot twists are unexpected, and Fowler's witty writing
is a joy to read."

--USA Today

"The Sweetheart Season is full of sparkling wit and flat-out good
writing about a town where someone can be suspected of putting on airs
simply by sporting an 'out of town haircut.' In territory long staked out
by Garrison Keillor, Fowler's book reads like the best of Lake Wobegon and
then some."

--The Philadelphia Inquirer

"The Sweetheart Season is a brilliantly evoked re-creation of the
post-war period in small-town America, filled with well-drawn
characters....A complex mixture of generosity and skepticism, a warm
meditation on and paean to those most romantic American traits: the
propensity for optimism in reduced circumstances, a gullible faith in the
unexpectedness and persistence of love, and an unshakable sense of irony
that is large enough to embrace both humor and affection."

--San Francisco Chronicle

"Fowler loves raising questions about where reality ends and imagination
begins....If you're willing to take chances on writers who color outside
the lines, try Fowler. She's a true original and one of the funniest
people currently writing in the English language."

--Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Fowler's authentically detailed and clever novel is frequently
digressive, but the digressions charm. Deadpan irony ('The Baldishes had
been among the first to explore decorating with deer') and quirky
characters worthy of Dickens raise the entertainment quotient....Fowler
depicts our nation's past as more surreal than real while at the same time
slamming her book out of the ballpark."

--Publishers Weekly

About this edition

• Publisher: Henry Holt & Co
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0805047379
• ISBN 13: 9780805047370
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352