“If you build it, he will come” is probably the most famous line from W.P. Kinsella’s baseball fairy tale Shoeless Joe. But Kinsella does a wonderful thing in that he plays that line as a great bit of misdirection about the real subject of the book. While the movie is probably more well known, the book is a better story. The book is in a genre of its own, American fantasy. Covering such American topics as, baseball, small town farms, traveling carnivals, JD Salinger and the American Dream, Shoeless Joe is a magical journey through an America that doesn’t exist anymore and probably never did, but is missed by all.

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