As has been the case with so many of Shrake's novels, particularly the absurdly overwritten historical, The Borderland, this new offering, despite its charms, suffers from a lack of careful composition. That's a shame, since it's built on a great premise and could have been a superb childhood fantasy blended with genuine golf history. It's 1949, and Billy, after the death of his mother, finds himself in Fort Worth with his father, a drunken war veteran with a gambling problem. He sets out to become a caddy at the famed Colonial Country Club, where he is assigned to eccentric millionaire Ira Sandpaster. Billy is quickly branded a jinx by the irascible old man because he makes a suggestion that might improve Sandpaster's game. Despondent, Billy encounters the ghost of John Bredemus, legendary course architect, and the shade serves as the boy's guardian angel, ultimately engineering a meeting with golf legend Ben Hogan. Hogan takes Billy under his wing and initiates a match between the boy, who has had no formal training in golf, and the obnoxious club champion, Sonny Stonekiller, the erstwhile steady beau of Sandpaster's beautiful, spoiled granddaughter, Sandra. Shrake, as usual, pits the grotesquely rich against the heroically innocent and lets coincidence save the day, but the novel fails to develop either convincing characters or a captivating story. Fort Worth in the '40s is ripe for exploitation, but the novel slices into the rough, and potentially interesting developments are abandoned. This is Shrake in his stride but not at his best; it's a double bogey that will leave readers yearning for him to return to the birdie strokes of Blood Reckoning
and Strange Peaches. Agent, Esther Newberg at ICM. (Oct. 2)
