Fari Madrigal was a baseball pitcher who only comes around maybe once in a lifetime, and pitching coach Chet Macquire (aka: Mac) for the World Series-winning team, the Minnesota Twins, knows Fari is special, the "Real Thing," the very first time he sees footage of the phenom from Santa Domingo. Just how special Fari really is, Mac doesn't realize until he flies to the Dominican Republic and sees the pitcher in person. Fari displays remarkable control, has mastered several types of pitches besides the fastball to fool batters with, and-Fari is a woman. She is one of the best, if not the best, pitcher Mac has ever seen; but, will she be able to make it on the team, and be the first female ever to pitch in the Major Leagues?
I have to say, e-books are the coming thing, gaining more and more in popularity daily. I, myself, have written three e-books and am working on a fourth. Each is available in paperback, as well. E-books, though, are very portable, convenient, and you can carry around an entire library of them wherever you go. So, though many sites still don't deal with many e-book reviews, I was glad to get the opportunity to review the highly entertaining and page-turning Fastball Fari by the talented author Michael Cruit.
Fari is the twenty-five-year-old daughter of the deceased Major League relief pitcher Jose Madrigal. She is beautiful, with looks that could have made her a model. She may have a certain amount of telekinetic ability, also, that helps her accuracy. She also has a condition similar to autism, Aspberger's Syndrome, like the character of Walter Bishop in the TV series, Fringe. She is not impossible to get a hit off of; but she definitely makes hitters work to get one.
Fari is represented by her mother, Frances, who is a great character in her own right. Frances is a tough negotiator. Though she is aware that, no matter how great Fari is, getting paid more than the minimum of $100,000 the first year that most baseball players earn is probably going to be a hard sell. But, she works her negotiating magic a different way, getting Jack Daniels (JD) Johnson, the team's General Manager, to donate millions of dollars to stop the deforestation of rain forests in the Dominican Republic and Central America.
As cool of a character as Fari is, the characters around her also are very realistically portrayed and three-dimensional. Mac, still in mourning over the loss of his wife, who died of cancer, is a character I really found myself liking. He is taken with Fari, and starts to fall for her, despite the difference in their ages. He also has a twelve-year-old daughter, Kim, who he deeply cares for and loves, and Kim is another favorite character of mine in the novel.
Everyone who comes into contact with Fari is changed by her, and her remarkable skills, beauty, charisma, and presence. She is even chosen to be the pitcher for the opening game the Twins will play against the White Sox. Ticket sales soar, a huge amount of publicity is generated, and Fari gains admirers everywhere. But, she also gets attention of an undesirable nature, ranging from cat-calls to sexually suggestive e-mails to stalkers. These distractions threaten to cut short her promising career before it barely starts. What's worse, even the team's physician, Doc Skipper Harris, who is having a rocky relationship with his wife and other issues, is sexually attracted to Fari.
Fastball Fari by Michael Cruit is a stupendously well-written, engrossing debut novel. It's proof, as if any more were needed, that Indie authors can write with just as much skill and authority as any published by major companies. There's room for a sequel to be written, and I would love to read one; but, I'm sure that whatever book Michael Cruit writes next will be one that is well-written, and deserving of a wide audience. I'd highly recommend this very cool and unique book to anyone who is a fan of baseball, books about women breaking into fields dominated by men, and to anyone who loves reading great fiction, in general. Check it out today!
I have to say, e-books are the coming thing, gaining more and more in popularity daily. I, myself, have written three e-books and am working on a fourth. Each is available in paperback, as well. E-books, though, are very portable, convenient, and you can carry around an entire library of them wherever you go. So, though many sites still don't deal with many e-book reviews, I was glad to get the opportunity to review the highly entertaining and page-turning Fastball Fari by the talented author Michael Cruit.
Fari is the twenty-five-year-old daughter of the deceased Major League relief pitcher Jose Madrigal. She is beautiful, with looks that could have made her a model. She may have a certain amount of telekinetic ability, also, that helps her accuracy. She also has a condition similar to autism, Aspberger's Syndrome, like the character of Walter Bishop in the TV series, Fringe. She is not impossible to get a hit off of; but she definitely makes hitters work to get one.
Fari is represented by her mother, Frances, who is a great character in her own right. Frances is a tough negotiator. Though she is aware that, no matter how great Fari is, getting paid more than the minimum of $100,000 the first year that most baseball players earn is probably going to be a hard sell. But, she works her negotiating magic a different way, getting Jack Daniels (JD) Johnson, the team's General Manager, to donate millions of dollars to stop the deforestation of rain forests in the Dominican Republic and Central America.
As cool of a character as Fari is, the characters around her also are very realistically portrayed and three-dimensional. Mac, still in mourning over the loss of his wife, who died of cancer, is a character I really found myself liking. He is taken with Fari, and starts to fall for her, despite the difference in their ages. He also has a twelve-year-old daughter, Kim, who he deeply cares for and loves, and Kim is another favorite character of mine in the novel.
Everyone who comes into contact with Fari is changed by her, and her remarkable skills, beauty, charisma, and presence. She is even chosen to be the pitcher for the opening game the Twins will play against the White Sox. Ticket sales soar, a huge amount of publicity is generated, and Fari gains admirers everywhere. But, she also gets attention of an undesirable nature, ranging from cat-calls to sexually suggestive e-mails to stalkers. These distractions threaten to cut short her promising career before it barely starts. What's worse, even the team's physician, Doc Skipper Harris, who is having a rocky relationship with his wife and other issues, is sexually attracted to Fari.
Fastball Fari by Michael Cruit is a stupendously well-written, engrossing debut novel. It's proof, as if any more were needed, that Indie authors can write with just as much skill and authority as any published by major companies. There's room for a sequel to be written, and I would love to read one; but, I'm sure that whatever book Michael Cruit writes next will be one that is well-written, and deserving of a wide audience. I'd highly recommend this very cool and unique book to anyone who is a fan of baseball, books about women breaking into fields dominated by men, and to anyone who loves reading great fiction, in general. Check it out today!
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