Ask the Author: N.H. Stack
Answered Questions (2)
N.H. Stack
Hi Carolyn, Thanks for your question. It is a novel and not a work of fiction. Thanks again!
N.H. Stack
During the summer, I walk my dog around a reservoir near my house. The place we go to is on the grounds of a local organization/center that offers their space for conferences/events. On the weekends and when there are no events taking place, they allow people to walk across their grounds to get to the neighboring lake so people can walk their dogs around the lake. They also allow dogs to be off-leash and it is a popular place for dog walkers to go. To get to the lake you have to cross a large and long empty field. One day I showed up with my dog and in the middle of the field were a group of cricket players playing cricket. I sat down with my dog to watch the game as I had never seen one before. I was immediately enthralled with the game and returned every Saturday with my dog to watch their games. Eventually, I spoke with some players and found out they had tried many times to find a field where they could play on a more permanent basis. They had been displaced a few times by other towns but the organization that allowed people to walk their dogs were equally generous to the cricket players. They even allowed them to eventually install a cricket pitch, which is like a pitcher's mound, and also keep their equipment in a locked trunk by the side of the field. This was during the time when refugees/immigrants were being kept from entering our country due to a travel ban. I was upset at how these cricket players also faced displacement as they were playing a game that was technically foreign to the communities that also housed baseball fields. The cricket players were also of Indian/Middle Eastern descent and I worried that they were also displaced due to the color of their skin and nationality. Altough I had no proof of this, it was still something I suspected. While watching the games weekly, I realized that the game of cricket was very similar to baseball and the way the cricket players spoke to each other during the game was similar to how baseball players spoke. This became the initial spark that set me off on writing a story that focused on finding commonality during a time of divisiveness.
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