The Beckoning World is set in the first quarter of the twentieth century and follows Earl Dunham. His weeks are comprised of six days mining coal, followed by Sundays playing baseball. Then one day a major-league scout happens on a game, signs Earl, and he begins a life he had no idea he could even dream.
But dreams sometimes suffer from a lovely abundance, and in Earl鈥檚 case her name is Emily Marchand. They fall quickly and deeply in love, but with that love comes heartbreaking complications.
The Beckoning World gathers a cast of characters that include Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig; a huge-hearted Pullman steward offering aphoristic wisdom; and countless others, not least of which is the 1918 Spanish flu taking vivid spectral form. At the center is a relentless love that Earl and Emily are defenseless against, allied as they are 鈥渋n this business of their hearts.鈥
鈥淚t鈥檚 been said that beyond being a storyteller, the novelist is also by default a sociologist, a historian, and a psychologist. And if they are any good, they are a magician too. Douglas Bauer is all these things in this expansive, insightful portrayal of the life and times of Earl Dunham, a coal miner turned baseball pitcher turned farmer. Ranging across the first half of the twentieth century, The Beckoning World gives us this man鈥檚 story, the long love of his life, Emily Marchand, and his son, Henry. The book provides a vision of American life and legend鈥擝abe Ruth and Lou Gehrig are vividly portrayed鈥攂ut most importantly, through Bauer鈥檚 sorcery, it provides a bright window into the nature of love itself, familial and passionate, abiding, and, yes, going through the 鈥榖lunt work鈥 of survival in all weathers.鈥濃擱ichard Bausch
鈥淎 rich, enthralling read. The characters and the world stayed with me long after I closed the covers.鈥濃擠ennis Lehane
鈥The Beckoning World does beckon, unfolding lives and enfolding readers with love stories, all the heartbreaks we cannot outrun, the lucky and unlucky life of a family and a world past. Bauer sees with telescope and microscope, inner and outer world shared with loving clarity and an open brilliant elegance.鈥濃擜my Bloom, author, In Love
鈥The Beckoning World seems at first a throwback: a novel that celebrates the rock-solid values of a bygone America as we track its protagonist from the coal mines to the stunning good fortune of a ride-along on a barnstorming tour with Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. But it turns out to be quietly subversive about our relationship to our aspirations鈥攂oth as a nation and as individuals鈥攁s well as the way love鈥攂oth eros and caritas鈥攋ust keeps coming for us. Doug Bauer has a wonderful ability to celebrate who we were without losing sight of all those ways in which we fell short of who we hoped we鈥檇 become.鈥濃擩im Shepard, author, The Book of Aron
鈥淎 beautiful, slow-cooker of a novel . . . that examines what it means to love, to follow your dreams, and to bend your aspirations for the people you love.鈥濃擫ee Woodruff, author, Those We Love Most and coauthor, New York Times bestseller, In An Instant
