Rereading: SUMMERLAND by Michael Chabon

Cover art by William Joyce

Ethan Feld lives on small Clam Island in Puget Sound, Washington state, where he’s part of a youth baseball team, and sadly, the team member who everyone including himself feels is the worst player. He wants to quit, but his father loves baseball so much that Ethan hates to do it. Team member Jennifer T. is Ethan’s best friend, and she does what she can to encourage him, but nothing seems to help. Ethan’s father is an inventor with high hopes for his personal dirigible aircraft, but so far it just provides nice rides to the ballpark known as Summerland. While there, Ethan and Jennifer get wind of terrible doings at Hotel Beach, just beyond the ballpark, and they go to investigate. Before long, they and their friend Thor are neck deep in fighting the nefarious plans of the mighty trickster himself, Coyote, who intends to bring down the World Tree and end life as we know it. Among other things, he has kidnapped Ethan’s father to make use of his inventions.

A terrifying journey begins through magic worlds full of strange creatures and stranger customs, but all joined by a love of baseball. Can Ethan, Thor, and Jennifer T. put together a winning team to save themselves and the world too?

I see this long novel as Chabon’s attempt to create a new American fantasy, drawing on tall tales, Native American legends, the Old West, Celtic/European fairy tales, alternate worlds, and of course that very American sport baseball. It has some ups and downs for me. There are too many surprise fixes to problems, and the blend of ideas is not always a success, but by the end, I was fully invested in the characters and enjoyed the way it played out on and off the ball field.

Recommended.

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