Better Angels (The Cobb Variations)

Seven-year-old David Phelan watched the drama unfold through the wide window of Windsor's Mulvaney's Tavern and feared for his mother, Lulu Pearl. Wallace Phelan had broken his Temperance Oath and promise to quit The Loyal Orange Lodge and leave Ireland's religious "Troubles" behind them.

"Sure, and if you want criticism—marry! Be off home, woman!"

"Home? Oh yes, Wallace, I'll be off home, alright…but you'll be coming with me!"

With one swing of his father's own Ty Cobb bat, loyal wife and Temperance leader, Lulu Pearl Phelan, struck her wayward husband a mighty blow to the head. His father just— disappeared.

And his formidable mother would not be the only unlikely hero to change David's life.

“Better Angels takes the reader on David Charles Phelan’s quest for a rare 1954 Topps 201 Al Kaline rookie baseball card. The story begins in 1919 with larger-than-life characters like David’s baseball bat-wielding grandmother, Lulu Pearl Phelan, part of the “Famine Irish” community of Windsor, Ontario. Also larger than life is Big Al Greathwaite, car salesman and catalyst in the tense and dramatic competition for the unique baseball card. Packed with baseball lore and historical detail, this book immerses the reader in a time few remember, a story resonant with the lasting impacts our actions have on each other’s lives.”

— Joanna Streetly, author of Silent Inlet and Wild Fierce Life

David Floody is a writer and novelist living and working in the village of Tofino, on the Wild West Coast of Vancouver Island, Canada, immersed in the awe-inspiring natural beauty of Clayoquot Sound, a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, home of old-growth forest, wild salmon and lands sacred to the Nuu-chah-nulth People for 5,000 years.

David is a member of the Clayoquot Writers' Group and the Performance Anxiety Collective, a cabaret group taking their words from the page to the stage. As the impish impresario of Implosion Press, he is dedicated to producing good writing with bad attitude. His YA novel, The Colour of Pride, set in Windsor and Detroit in 1968, will soon be available in ebook and print formats. Storyline: A year after the Detroit race riot, a Canadian teen confronts a young black girl, a racist bully and his own values at the 1968 World Series.

David is currently revising a near-future, science fiction novel sequel to one of his favourite sf movies, the 1950s' classic, The Day the Earth Stood Still, fan fiction without the heavy breathing (No sex please, we're aliens). "Klaatu barada nikto." (photo D. Baswick)