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The Beckoning World: A Novel
The Beckoning World is set in the first quarter of the twentieth century and follows Earl Dunham. His weeks are comprised of six days mining coal, followed by Sundays playing baseball. Then one day a major-league scout happens on a game, signs Earl, and he begins a life he had no idea he could even dream.
But dreams sometimes suffer from a lovely abundance, and in Earl’s case her name is Emily Marchand. They fall quickly and deeply in love, but with that love comes heartbreaking complications.
The Beckoning World gathers a cast of characters that include Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig; a huge-hearted Pullman steward offering aphoristic wisdom; and countless others, not least of which is the 1918 Spanish flu taking vivid spectral form. At the center is a relentless love that Earl and Emily are defenseless against, allied as they are “in this business of their hearts.”
But dreams sometimes suffer from a lovely abundance, and in Earl’s case her name is Emily Marchand. They fall quickly and deeply in love, but with that love comes heartbreaking complications.
The Beckoning World gathers a cast of characters that include Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig; a huge-hearted Pullman steward offering aphoristic wisdom; and countless others, not least of which is the 1918 Spanish flu taking vivid spectral form. At the center is a relentless love that Earl and Emily are defenseless against, allied as they are “in this business of their hearts.”
- GenresHistorical Fiction
276 pages, Paperback
Published November 1, 2022
About the author
Douglas Bauer
15 books7 followersI’ve written three novels, Dexterity, The Very Air, and The Book of Famous Iowans, each of them set in small towns, in Upstate New York, in Texas, and in Iowa. Their subjects and interests are as varied as their settings, although reviewers have pointed out that they all concern themselves in some fashion with mothers’ unpredictable presences and absences and the effect of that unreliability on their sons.
I’ve also written two non-fiction books, Prairie City, Iowa and The Stuff of Fiction. The first covers a year of reunion with the tiny farm village of the title, where I was raised and to which I returned at the age of 30 in order to try to understand the place where I grew up and, not incidentally, some things about myself as I reached that critical age. The second is a series of essays devoted to the craft of fiction writing. The essays cover the elements of character creation, dialogue, narrative strategies, how to start and end a story, and many more. There are exercises accompanying the essays.
In addition to the books I’ve written, I’ve edited two anthologies, Prime Times: Writers on their favorite television shows; and Death by Pad Thai and Other Unforgettable Meals. These anthologies feature contributions from some of the most prominent writers of our time, including Sue Miller, Andre Dubus III, Aimee Bender, Richard Russo, Claire Messud, Nick Hornby, the late and very great Barry Hannah, and on and on.
My stories and essays have appeared through the years in The Atlantic, Harper’s, Esquire, Tin House, The New York Times Magazine and Sunday Book Review, The Massachusetts Review, Agni, and other publications.
I’ve received grants in both fiction and non-fiction from The National Endowment for the Arts.
I’ve taught at several colleges and universities, including Harvard, Smith, The University of New Mexico, Rice, and since 2005 at Bennington College. My courses there include literature classes in the works of Charles Dickens, my favorite author in the language, as well as Twentieth Century writers such as Willa Cather, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway.
I’ve also written two non-fiction books, Prairie City, Iowa and The Stuff of Fiction. The first covers a year of reunion with the tiny farm village of the title, where I was raised and to which I returned at the age of 30 in order to try to understand the place where I grew up and, not incidentally, some things about myself as I reached that critical age. The second is a series of essays devoted to the craft of fiction writing. The essays cover the elements of character creation, dialogue, narrative strategies, how to start and end a story, and many more. There are exercises accompanying the essays.
In addition to the books I’ve written, I’ve edited two anthologies, Prime Times: Writers on their favorite television shows; and Death by Pad Thai and Other Unforgettable Meals. These anthologies feature contributions from some of the most prominent writers of our time, including Sue Miller, Andre Dubus III, Aimee Bender, Richard Russo, Claire Messud, Nick Hornby, the late and very great Barry Hannah, and on and on.
My stories and essays have appeared through the years in The Atlantic, Harper’s, Esquire, Tin House, The New York Times Magazine and Sunday Book Review, The Massachusetts Review, Agni, and other publications.
I’ve received grants in both fiction and non-fiction from The National Endowment for the Arts.
I’ve taught at several colleges and universities, including Harvard, Smith, The University of New Mexico, Rice, and since 2005 at Bennington College. My courses there include literature classes in the works of Charles Dickens, my favorite author in the language, as well as Twentieth Century writers such as Willa Cather, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway.
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
November 27, 2022
3.5 stars,
I heard about this book on The Book Case podcast. The story revolves around baseball, specifically Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, but, they are not the center of the book. A family whose lives intertwine with baseball and the two legends are. It gets real and it gets complicated. Tough decisions are made. Exciting decisions are made.
Beautiful writing, for me, was the fuel for this story.
I heard about this book on The Book Case podcast. The story revolves around baseball, specifically Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, but, they are not the center of the book. A family whose lives intertwine with baseball and the two legends are. It gets real and it gets complicated. Tough decisions are made. Exciting decisions are made.
Beautiful writing, for me, was the fuel for this story.
August 28, 2022
The Beckoning World is a complex novel: intelligent and sentimental in equal measure, carefully restrained and yet brimming with emotion, grounded in reality but fanciful in its fantasy of baseball celebrity. This is a tale of ordinary desire, ambition, failure, and the sacrifices of love that we can recognize in others and in the society at large, and yet there is enough fiction here to allow us to deny the existence of this tragedy in our own lives.
If you love Stoner by John Williams or Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov, Reader, you’ll appreciate the agony of life Bauer portrays here, the quotidian kind, the slow descent into ordinariness that we all must confront, whether we accept it or not. The Beckoning World is as much a tale of the world beyond our borders as it is the world within our constraints that we cannot escape. The call is not always one to adventure, but a tether.
That is not to say this novel lacks adventure for it does not, it has adventure in buckets. The Beckoning World is also a coming-of-age journey, tracing that phenomenon’s mental and physical challenges and explorations. There is a real adventure here — and the kind of fantasy that some of us only dream of. Reader, you’ll live vicariously through Henry’s eyes, live through the fantasy of childhood — his and perhaps your own.
It is hard to pinpoint what The Beckoning World is about for to outline its plot captures only a small part of its appeal. Its characters are the real attraction here: Earl, Emily, Henry, Babe, Gehrig, Walsh, Lottie, Rooster. They are manifestations of persons in our lives; flawed and perfect. Bauer develops them with succinct, incisive prose that, in silences, invites the reader’s imagination to participate. Bauer captures our investment quickly, and Reader, you’ll be rewarded quickly; the story moves at a steady pace even as it lingers in some moments longer than others. Like Williams and Nabokov, novels of that mid-20th century period, Bauer’s prose is the sort I enjoy: narrative, descriptive (but not overly so), structured.
The novel is set in Midwest America in the early 20th century. There is a pastoral quality to it, one that is generic, recognizable, comforting. This element of the novel is cast in a sepia light, historical and still otherworldly: this is a time and place lost to us and only visible through a veil of nostalgia. It begins with Earl, a young man from the Midwest who — like many of us — is faced with the choices of adulthood and responsibility. Emily, a young woman from the same rural background must make the same decisions, balance desire with practicality. The result is Henry, who becomes the central focus of the novel and who is the focus of the great baseball adventure that ensues.
Through a fantastical encounter with baseball, Babe Ruth, and Lou Gehrig and a journey across the country Earl and Henry come to terms with their loss, life, and future. This is a bildungsroman of the American kind.
A highly enjoyable, thoughtful read. The Beckoning World is a wonderful addition to the genre of the classic American novel.
If you love Stoner by John Williams or Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov, Reader, you’ll appreciate the agony of life Bauer portrays here, the quotidian kind, the slow descent into ordinariness that we all must confront, whether we accept it or not. The Beckoning World is as much a tale of the world beyond our borders as it is the world within our constraints that we cannot escape. The call is not always one to adventure, but a tether.
That is not to say this novel lacks adventure for it does not, it has adventure in buckets. The Beckoning World is also a coming-of-age journey, tracing that phenomenon’s mental and physical challenges and explorations. There is a real adventure here — and the kind of fantasy that some of us only dream of. Reader, you’ll live vicariously through Henry’s eyes, live through the fantasy of childhood — his and perhaps your own.
It is hard to pinpoint what The Beckoning World is about for to outline its plot captures only a small part of its appeal. Its characters are the real attraction here: Earl, Emily, Henry, Babe, Gehrig, Walsh, Lottie, Rooster. They are manifestations of persons in our lives; flawed and perfect. Bauer develops them with succinct, incisive prose that, in silences, invites the reader’s imagination to participate. Bauer captures our investment quickly, and Reader, you’ll be rewarded quickly; the story moves at a steady pace even as it lingers in some moments longer than others. Like Williams and Nabokov, novels of that mid-20th century period, Bauer’s prose is the sort I enjoy: narrative, descriptive (but not overly so), structured.
The novel is set in Midwest America in the early 20th century. There is a pastoral quality to it, one that is generic, recognizable, comforting. This element of the novel is cast in a sepia light, historical and still otherworldly: this is a time and place lost to us and only visible through a veil of nostalgia. It begins with Earl, a young man from the Midwest who — like many of us — is faced with the choices of adulthood and responsibility. Emily, a young woman from the same rural background must make the same decisions, balance desire with practicality. The result is Henry, who becomes the central focus of the novel and who is the focus of the great baseball adventure that ensues.
Through a fantastical encounter with baseball, Babe Ruth, and Lou Gehrig and a journey across the country Earl and Henry come to terms with their loss, life, and future. This is a bildungsroman of the American kind.
A highly enjoyable, thoughtful read. The Beckoning World is a wonderful addition to the genre of the classic American novel.
November 6, 2022
Totally gripping. Full of the romance and heartbreaks of life, the ways we are forced to accept the roaming hand of chance as it falls on our lives. There are also spectacularly written scenes of baseball, poetically evocative descriptions of the American West. Bauer also makes Gehrig and Ruth come to life on the page in unexpected ways. So much longing and sadness and life in this story. Great especially for lovers of historical fiction. I will be thinking about it for a long time.
January 9, 2025
The heart of this novel is set on a farm in northwest Iowa (though significant parts of it are set elsewhere in the Midwest). Most books set in places like this are about the characters' eagerness to escape them or, occasionally, are nostalgic elegies to the simpler life such places supposedly embody. This is neither. Notably, it's about CHOOSING to live in such a place, knowing the sacrifices one makes to do so, but ultimately embracing it. (This perspective in spelled out most directly in a remarkable passage on pages 243-44.) It's a much richer view than either of the others. The first part of the novel, set in 1916-18, is a lovely love story, he the son of a coal miner from south central Iowa, she the daughter of a farmer in northwest Iowa; they meet in Waterloo, Iowa. Then, just short of the midpoint, the story takes an abrupt turn in tone and content and becomes a sort of road trip novel, except that the road is a rail line and the car a Pullman car. The main character, along with his 10-year-old son, join Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth on their exhibition tour in October 1927 of small cities and towns across the Midwest and West, including Des Moines and Sioux City, Iowa. (Such a tour actually took place.) That part shifts perspective among the four characters, though always in third person. In the final section, the son, 20 years later in first person, reflects back on that experience--and on what he knows of his father's earlier life.
The son recalls seeing the mountains of the West; "you could admire that landscape," he observes, "you could be humbled, made speechless by it. But there was no way to feel invited INTO it." A couple of pages later, he recalls trying to describe for a friend, "how, working a field, . . . following crop rows to their end, I sometimes felt myself moving straight into the sky, not TOWARD it, INTO it, breathing it greedily, its blue infinity" (262, 264). (This despite his father's observation one day in the fields that what a farmer sees while working is not the vast horizon; instead, "What you see all day is the ass end of a mule" [243].)
The comments about landscape are, incidentally, samples of the thoughtfulness of this novel and of the exquisite prose in which it is conveyed. I will add, too, that all of the characters are immensely likable, especially (even though most of the focus is on white male characters) the wise mother/grandmother and the equally wise Black Pullman porter. It's another chink in the adage that unhappy families are the proper subject of fiction because happy families are all happy in the same way while unhappy families are unhappy in an infinite number of ways.
I was introduced to this author shortly after arriving in Iowa nearly 40 years ago. His nonfiction account of a season spent at age 30 in his home town of Prairie City, Iowa, was a good introduction to the state, like this one neither nostalgic nor condemnatory. Later I read his novel The Book of Famous Iowans. That one was good, but this is even better. Too bad he hasn't written more--though maybe not if this was all he had in him.
The son recalls seeing the mountains of the West; "you could admire that landscape," he observes, "you could be humbled, made speechless by it. But there was no way to feel invited INTO it." A couple of pages later, he recalls trying to describe for a friend, "how, working a field, . . . following crop rows to their end, I sometimes felt myself moving straight into the sky, not TOWARD it, INTO it, breathing it greedily, its blue infinity" (262, 264). (This despite his father's observation one day in the fields that what a farmer sees while working is not the vast horizon; instead, "What you see all day is the ass end of a mule" [243].)
The comments about landscape are, incidentally, samples of the thoughtfulness of this novel and of the exquisite prose in which it is conveyed. I will add, too, that all of the characters are immensely likable, especially (even though most of the focus is on white male characters) the wise mother/grandmother and the equally wise Black Pullman porter. It's another chink in the adage that unhappy families are the proper subject of fiction because happy families are all happy in the same way while unhappy families are unhappy in an infinite number of ways.
I was introduced to this author shortly after arriving in Iowa nearly 40 years ago. His nonfiction account of a season spent at age 30 in his home town of Prairie City, Iowa, was a good introduction to the state, like this one neither nostalgic nor condemnatory. Later I read his novel The Book of Famous Iowans. That one was good, but this is even better. Too bad he hasn't written more--though maybe not if this was all he had in him.
February 16, 2025
This is a quiet novel set in the early 20th century that depicts what many think of as a simpler time in this country, particularly in the Midwest.
The book is quite well-written and tells the story of Earl Dunham, coal miner's son and promising baseball player, as we see him navigate the basics of life - relationships, family, and especially hopes and dreams. The book mostly covers Earl from his mid-teens through mid-thirties as he is stuck between the insular world in which he was raised and the larger opportunities a baseball career might offer (and remember, this is well before baseball paid the way it does now so financial security also plays a big role).
As a baseball fan, what elevated the book to five stars for me was the insertion of Ruth and Gehrig into the plot to offer a lens into what baseball celebrity looked like 100 years ago. We are treated to barnstorming, train rides, and Ruth's legendary personality.
This is not a happily-ever-after novel, but rather one that gets its strength from its exploration of day-to-day experiences, decisions, sacrifices, and love.
The book is quite well-written and tells the story of Earl Dunham, coal miner's son and promising baseball player, as we see him navigate the basics of life - relationships, family, and especially hopes and dreams. The book mostly covers Earl from his mid-teens through mid-thirties as he is stuck between the insular world in which he was raised and the larger opportunities a baseball career might offer (and remember, this is well before baseball paid the way it does now so financial security also plays a big role).
As a baseball fan, what elevated the book to five stars for me was the insertion of Ruth and Gehrig into the plot to offer a lens into what baseball celebrity looked like 100 years ago. We are treated to barnstorming, train rides, and Ruth's legendary personality.
This is not a happily-ever-after novel, but rather one that gets its strength from its exploration of day-to-day experiences, decisions, sacrifices, and love.
December 18, 2022
Rich prose combines with baseball historical fiction in this engaging story. Bauer is a professor of writing at Bennington College, and he certainly knows how to put words together in a voluptuous way. The book is not a fast read because you want to savor the images that show the characters -- fictional fathers and sons as well as Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.
For fans of baseball and for anyone who likes literary fiction. A gem.
For fans of baseball and for anyone who likes literary fiction. A gem.
September 12, 2022
Very good writing here, and mostly engaging with a large cast. There's a lot that goes on, and I enjoyed the character study of these people. Recommended.
Thanks very much for the free ARC for review!!
Thanks very much for the free ARC for review!!
April 21, 2023
Beautifully written with well drawn characters, this novel transported me to another time. I was upset, however, that my favorite section of the novel was abandoned, but the author eventually showed me other characters to fall in love with.
November 9, 2022
Beautifully written. Unique, memorable characters & unexpected plot. Loved the way he wove fictional characters into baseball and world history.
February 15, 2023
A simple story full of complexity, or a complex story full of simplicity, I’m not sure which. Elegantly written.
January 24, 2026
Coming from a small town, I could relate to the characters and their perspective of life. I enjoyed the intertwining of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig within the novel to create a believable while fictional history.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews