How a Gringo Came To Write an Award Winning Latino Novel

The first question I get is usually how could I write in the voice of a thirteen year old Latino boy? I am  about as far as you can get culturally from a young adult Latino just barely hanging on with his mother. But of course if you are a writer you are so many people that biographers will never get it straight. It is the same way I wrote in the voice of an old African American man in Tobacco Sticks and in Mica Highways.

Voice is everything. Once you have the voice you have the novel. When I started The Pitcher I wrote it in third person but quickly realized it would not work that way. It was boring and distant. So I started over and I knew it had to be first person but who would tell the story? The old pitcher? The mother? No. The boy, Ricky. Ricky would tell the story. And so I started to play around with his voice. Then I wrote one paragraph.

"I never knew I had an arm until this guy calls out, "Hey, you want to try and get a ball in the hole, sonny?" I am only nine, but Mom says, "Come on, let's play." This carnival guy with no teeth and a fuming cigarette hands me five blue rubber balls and says I throw three in the hole, then we win a prize. He's grinning, because he's taken Mom's five bucks and figures a sucker is born every minute. This really gets me , because we didn't have any money after Fernando took off, and he only comes back to beat up Mom and steal our money. So I really wanted to get Mom back something, you know, for her five bucks."

And I had Ricky then. I had the novel. And where that voice came from is anyones guess. Maybe it is that kid who messed around in Baltimore City where I grew up. Maybe it was some of the Mexican guys I worked security with. And of course the hard times Ricky and his mother go through are my own hard times. And the baseball is my sons baseball and the coaches and parents are from nine years of being an assistant coach with my son. The immigration issues are from time and Ricky's dream of becoming an MLB pitcher is my own of becoming a novelist against immense odds.

Then again, maybe it was just Ricky flying around out there waiting to be born. But when the Latino Book of the Month Club made it their Monthly Selection or LA Latino did a story on the immigration issues in the book or I stand up on a stage at the Latino Book Festival in Chicago and read my book that  has to be translated to Spanish so the audience can understand what I am saying...even I wonder how a Gringo came to write a Latino novel.

 I guess I just did.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher

Latino Book Club Review of The PItcher

Ricky,
      I know you are having trouble. Just remember that you can do anything you want if you put your mind to it.  Don't worry about me.  I will always be there for you.  I will always be with you. Just take your breath and listen to what Mr. Langford tells you.  Remember I will always love you and that will never change.  You are becoming a fine young man and a great baseball player.  I couldn't be prouder of you. Now take your breath, find your quiet space and use the gift God gave you.  I love you.
       Love you forever,
                Mom
       P.S.  Take your breath!"




THE PITCHER is destined to become a classic.  It is well-written, funny, heart-warming, engaging, easy to read, romantic and uplifting. On the surface this story may seem to be all about baseball and pitchers, but it’s more than that. THE PITCHER, a Junior Library Guild Selection, is about a loving and determined Hispanic mother who will endure anything and survive everything for the love of her child and his right to fulfill his dreams; it’s about overcoming prejudice and poverty; it’s about second chances; and most of all, it’s about learning to believe in yourself.

Book Summary: 14-year-old Ricky Hernandez is about to enter high school and wants a spot on the school baseball team. The problem is his wild pitching arm. He can throw super fast but he has no control over it. Just like he has no control over his ex-father who continues to barge in and steal what little money they have; nor his grandmother’s fears of deportation; nor the rival pitcher who continually bullies him; nor his mother’s deteriorating ill health. Ricky longs for some helpful tips from another pitcher, like a World Series pitcher and MVP Jack Langford, who just happens to live next door, but Jack wants to be left alone. In fact, all anybody ever sees are his feet at the bottom of the garage door which is always down.

However, Jack doesn’t count on Maria Hernandez. She is a dynamo and will not take no for an answer, even if it means confronting a curmudgeon in his man-cave and forcing him into the light. Yet even with the MLB pitcher finally coaching him, Ricky can’t seem to find his zone. And when his mother’s health takes a turn for the worse nothing seems to matter anymore and certainly not some stupid baseball game. But Maria will not let him quit and from her hospital bed she encourages her son to prove himself and win. There is the obligatory“win this one for the coach” scene, but it rings true. And the ending is inspiring and joyful as any reader could wish.###

www.williamhazelgrove.com
Latino Book Club Review of The Pitcher

Back To School

There they go again. Lunches and backpacks for their drop out of the mother ship. And there goes a daughter in a new dress and a son up before the dawn. The last one lines up with her new class. And we go about our daily routine. Another day but it does mark summers end doesn't it even though summer goes to the twenty first of September. And even on the bike ride you can hear the corn rustling now and the air has the dry feel of empty husks..the smell of harvest.

And we turn into another year while they greet new schoolmates and renew old friendships. The new teacher could be good or bad. The new desk is something to get used too and summer still yawns out that slit window open to the returning heat. Because summer does come back on the first day of school. It is part of the ritual. A cool summer then blazing heat for those first months of children stuck inside cinder block forts. If only the heat had come earlier.

And you think of all the things you wanted to do with your kids. You did some of them. Went to a ballgame. The pool. Vacation. But you worked a lot and you wonder if you should have spent more time with them while they were home. Because they are not now. They have left like the soon departing summer... and autumn is closing in.

The Pitcher...what a mom won't do for her sons dream