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Joseph Wallace
Dear Librarian, As a lifelong reader and long-time writer of nonfiction history books, I feel like I've spent half my life in libraries. And I was, in fact, sitting in a library (at the Baseball Hall of Fame) when I was inspired to write DIAMOND RUBY, my first novel. The inspiration: a photo of a teenage girl in a baseball uniform shaking hands with Babe Ruth as a grinning Lou Gehrig looked on. What I discovered about this remarkable photo was both infuriating and perhaps inevitable: The girl, Jackie Mitchell, was a pitching phenom who in the early 1930s had gotten the chance to pitch to Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig...and had struck them both out. Days later, she and all women were banned from playing baseball by the game's commissioner, on the ground that it was "too strenuous" for them. Lacking a time machine to go back and change history, I wrote a novel instead. To set the book in a real world—New York City during the Roaring Twenties—I spent more months in libraries, mostly poring over books and newspapers from the time at the New York Public Library. Since its publication in May, DIAMOND RUBY has garnered a passionate response from readers (from adults to children of eleven or twelve) who love Ruby's strength, street smarts, and unwillingness to buckle to convention. In a starred review, the Library Journal agreed, saying, "RUBY is a keeper—a believable heroine living in a fully re-created New York world of baseball and Prohibition. There are echoes of Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, but this story holds its own, allowing Diamond Ruby her place as a literary gem." I'm conducting a drawing for five free copies of DIAMOND RUBY. Please write me at josephwallace@josephwallace.com, with the subject line 'Diamond Ruby Contest'. If you recommend a book to me that you loved, I'll enter your name twice in the contest. (Deadline for the contest is August 31.) My book trailer for Diamond Ruby can be found here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlbeIcICkXQ You can find out much more about Ruby at my website: www.josephwallace.com. Joseph Wallace
Diamond Ruby / Joseph Wallace / Touchstone / Paperback; 480 Pages
Price: $16.00 / ISBN: 978-1439160053 / Published: May, 2010 Joseph Wallace is one of our featured authors this week. Click here to view his reader comments and feel free to use them in your newsletters. |