W.P. Kinsella back in the game with Butterfly Winter

The Further Adventures of Slugger Kinsella…

So Butterfly Winter should be a very big deal in Canadian publishing. The author of Shoeless Joe is back. He’s writing about baseball. He’s including hallmark elements of magic realism.

...Nevertheless, Butterfly Winter should appeal to his core audience. It’s the story of twins Julio and Esteban, baseball players from the fictional Caribbean country of Courteguay who aim for the big leagues while being controlled by a mysterious man in a hot-air balloon known as the Wizard. The tale unfolds as an interview between the Wizard and a character referred to as the Gringo Journalist, both of whom appear to contain elements of the author.

As with so many of his novels, baseball becomes a rich backdrop for a tale about family, romance and magic. For Kinsella, the game has always been a deep well to draw from, even if the explanation for his obsession sounds somewhat enigmatic.

“It’s the open-endedness of the game,” he says. “The other sports are all twice enclosed, first by time limits and then by playing boundaries. On a true baseball field, the foul lines diverge forever, eventually taking in a good part of the universe. There’s no time limit on a baseball game. So it makes for larger-than-life characters. Things like basketball and hockey are limited to that little playing surface. It’s hard to get really magical happenings.”