Review of "Kelli's Pine"

While I have been reading more fictional books lately, I can honestly say that this one grabbed me in a way that no other fictional book had, sports or otherwise.  I will stop short of saying this is the best one I have ever read.  Just as I don't like "GOAT" arguments in sports, I don't like picking just one book as the "best."  I'll just say that this one is definitely high on my list of favorites.  Here is my review of "Kelli's Pine."

Title/Author:

“Kelli’s Pine” by Jay Grochowski

Rating: 

5 of 5 stars (Excellent)

Review:  Most sports fiction books that I have read will deal mostly with the sport and the role it plays in the characters’ lives in some way.  In “Kelli’s Pine”, an excellent novel by Jay Grochowski, the sports that are involved in the story are important, but not the driving force in the book and that is a good thing for this story. 

The book revolves mainly around three characters – Eddie Blackburn, his wife Kelli and their son Cole.  Eddie did not finish high school because he had to rescue the family business of providing and servicing portable toilets.  This became necessary when his father left his wife and family with not only the business but also a $40,000 gambling debt.  Eddie succeeded in making the business work, but at the cost of his dreams of playing professional baseball.

Kelli Swanson was a star basketball player in high school and her father was a legendary athlete in their hometown of Mankato, Minnesota as well.  However, she and Eddie had an instant connection and one night near a pine tree where they shared their first Christmas, Cole was conceived.  Kelli and Eddie married shortly after Kelli discovered she was pregnant.  While this, along with knee surgery ended her basketball dreams, Kelli and Eddie raised Cole well and he became a baseball star through a program run by Eddie. 

The baseball scenes in the book after Cole signed with the independent league Mankato Carp are excellent in describing his baseball talents. If a reader wants to find a comparison, Cole could be considered a fictional version of Shohei Ohtani with talent in both hitting and pitching.  But overall, there is not a lot of baseball in the book – enough for a fan to enjoy it, but it is far from the main theme of the story.  The same goes for basketball – even though Kelli and Eddie’s sister Krissy played on a championship team, the basketball scenes are short but very descriptive.

What makes the book so good and one that would be enjoyed by many readers – sports fans or not – is that it covers a wide range of topics and also has great character development.  To start, it might be considered by some to be a romance novel with the story of Eddie and Kelli’s relationship and how it remained strong.  It touches on mental health with both Kelli and Cole suffering from social anxiety disorder.  The story has a lot of family dynamics at play.  Not just with the three main characters, but also others in both the Blackburn and Swanson family.  Nearly every parent, grandparent and sibling in both families have their character developed and the reader will walk away knowing more about them.

Because these characters are well-developed with admirable characteristics and some flaws, the reader will have a hard time picking any one to be a bad person.  This is even true for the two fathers – Eddie’s and Kelli’s father, who attacked Eddie when he found out his daughter was pregnant.

Hopefully, I have not given away too much of this story because one has to read every word to get all that a reader should get from this book.  It is one of the few books I have received that I have read more than once and that is why this review is later than what I promised to the author – I had to read it a second time before writing this so that I could fully digest this excellent story.

I wish to thank the author for providing a review copy of the book. The opinions expressed are strictly my own.

Link: Kelli's Pine (The Blackburn's of Mankato): Grochowski, Jay: 9798629296379: Amazon.com: Books