Thirty-six (short) chapters with a cliff-hanger or a plot twist at the end of almost every one. Now that’s an accomplishment, even if it did give me a feeling of whiplash being jerked around that much. Just when I thought I knew which direction the narrative was going, just when I thought I knew what was going to happen next, just when I thought I had the characters’ decisions and motivations figured out, just when I thought something somewhere was resolved, it wasn’t and I didn’t. I don’t honestly know if this would captivate or annoy most children, but it made me keep reading until nearly the end, about chapter thirty-one, when I just wanted everything to be settled and decided. I did finish to make sure that it was settled, but I was ready to slap the author up the side of the head if she wrote another about-face and switch directions.

The story is about an annual baseball game, Walt Whitman’s poetry, an anniversary county history pageant, the death of old man Norwood Rhinehart Beauregard Boyd, and the friendship between House Jackson, pitcher, and Cleebo Wilson, catcher, for the Aurora County All-Stars. All of these things, especially the pageant and the baseball game which happen to be scheduled for the exact same day and time, become entwined and enmeshed and confused, and the only way anything is ever going to work out is for House to figure out Whitman’s words about “the symphony true” and how they apply to events in Aurora County, Mabel, Mississippi, in the summer of whatever year it is in this story.

I dunno. The story was fun and intriguing with its double back somersaults, but maybe it’s too twisty and double-crossing for kids. I think I’ll try it out on some of mine and see what happens. I’ll get back to you on how the experiment goes.

Oh, I did like the quotations at the beginning of chapters from Walt Whitman, who was apparently a baseball fan (who knew?), and from various and sundry famous baseball players. I’ll whet your appetite for the book with a few:

“People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.” —Roger Hornsby, second baseman, St. Louis Cardinals.

“If you come to a fork in the road, take it.” —Yogi Berra, catcher, New York Yankees.

“After the clangor of organ majestic, or chorus, or perfect band,
Silent athwart my soul, moves the symphony true.” —Walt Whitman

“Anytime you have an oppportunity to make a difference in this world and you don’t, then you are wasting your time on earth.” —Roberto Clemente, right fielder, Pittsburgh Pirates.

The Aurora County All-Stars reminds-me-of last year’s Out of Patience by Brian Miehl (Semicolon review here): small town baseball team, historical secrets, possible treasure, single parent dad. The Aurora County All-Stars is nominated for the Cybil Award for Middle Grade Fiction.

Other bloggers chime in:

Elizabeth Bird at A Fuse #8 Production: “House has the same good-hearted reticence as Cooper, complete with strong short sentences and a kind of basic decency you look for in an old-fashioned hero. Since Wiles’ novels all seem to take place in a kind of no-time (an era when soap operas and small town baseball games exist within the same sphere) it makes sense that House’s actions and mannerisms should conjure up the hero of a time past.”

Bookshelves of Doom: “Baseball and Walt Whitman and friendship and family and history and yes, it made me cry. Not in a full-on sobbing-so-much-it-hurts way, but in a pleasant, I-love-baseball-stories and I-love-the-people-in-Aurora-County sort of way.”

Sarah Miller: “The pageant vs. ballgame plot moves along at a healthy clip, and the book is loaded with cliff hangers, from ghosts and garden hose duels to busted elbows with bases loaded.”

Franki at A Year of Reading: “This is a story of baseball, a story of a strong community, and a story of friends. Deborah Wiles ties the story together with quotes from Walt Whitman. She also uses quotes from famous baseball players to set the stage for each chapter. Her writing is brilliant.”

Kirsten at The Kingdom of Books: “Another great book by Deborah Wiles! The lazy days of a small town summer where baseball and 4th of July pageants take center field transport the reader to a nostalgic place in time when neighbors looked out for one another and life was enjoyed outdoors.”

Read, Read, Read: “I liked that the book could appeal to both girls and boys. I also liked that the characters had some genuine qualities that could pull you into the story. I did shed a tear or two during the story. I love stories set in small towns.”

Obviously they (mostly) liked it better than I did.

Way Down Deep is a town in West Virginia: an odd sort of town with several real live characters, including an old lady who throws rocks at kids, a goat named Jethro, and a granny lady with a talking owl. Ruby June, the protagonist of the novel, is a red-headed foundling who appeared in 1944 on the steps of the courthouse. She’s an atypical foundling in that she was approximately three years old when found, but the rest of her childhood pretty much follows the “orphan adopted by a spinster lady with lots of love to give” pattern. The people of Way Down Deep are generally kind, loving and forgiving, a fact which turns out to be key to ending of the story.

In other words the whole book has a sort of fairy tale feel to it (think magical realism for kids), so I wasn’t too surprised when the mystery of Ruby June’s birth, family background, and appearance in Way Down Deep turns out to have a solution that’s part realistic and somewhat surreal, too. And the mixture is never really explained even after the basic facts are ascertained.

I almost felt as if the author had this collection of characters in her mind that she wanted to put into a book, and they all escaped into this one:
Bonnie Clare, Connie Lynn, and Sunny Gaye are identical triplets who spend their spare evenings doing street evangelism, preaching the gospel and a temperance message to passers-by.
Robber Bob is a stranger who comes to Way Down Deep and tries to hold up the bank, with hilarious results.
Robber Bob Reeder has five children: Peter Reeder, Cedar Reeder, twins Skeeter and Jeeter Reeder, and the baby of the family, little Rita Reeder.
A.H. Crawford is an author of independent means with ”two front names” that he prefers not to use. Read the book and you’ll understand why. Mr. Crawford is writing a book about the history of Way Down Deep, but since he spends most of his days asleep in bed, the book isn’t coming along too well.
Miss Worly is the town librarian who delights “in peppering her sentences with fancy words.” The kids in town call her Miss Wordy.
Sheriff Reynolds was an officer whose “heart was way too soft and his mind too fuzzy for sheriffing.”
And Miss Arbutus Ward, Ruby’s foster mother, is the last descendant of the founding father of Way Down Deep, Archibald Ward. She’s also the owner and sole proprietor of The Roost, a boardinghouse for even more odd and quirky characters.

In fact, there’s a list at the beginning of the book of all the characters just so you can keep track of them. It’s a sort of a comic strip in prose, Little Orphan Annie meets Heidi. The book definitely began to remind me more of Heidi and less of Anne of Green Gables in the second half when Ruby June meets her cranky old grandmother who lives at the top of a mountain in a house all by herself and runs off anyone who tries to get close. Ruby June tames Grandma just as Heidi tamed the Alm Uncle, and they all live happily ever after in typical fairy tale fashion.

Don’t worry. I’ve given you some of the plot and introduced you to some of the characters, but there are plenty more eccentric Appalachian oddballs and several more story threads to keep you enjoying this rather pleasant tale. I doubt it will keep anyone awake at night pondering the deeper mysteries of life, but it’s good clean fun.

Way Down Deep is nominated for the Cybil Award for Middle Grade Fiction.

A 1995 interview with author Ruth White.

Publisher’s Weekly 2007 interview with Ms. White.

Other blog reviews of Way Down Deep:

Jules at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast: “White pulls it all together with the cohesive thread that is, at its core, a tender narrative about the relationship between a caretaker and her child — and what it truly means to be a family.”