Wait Till Next Year

September 29, 1997
This memoir by the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian (No Ordinary Time) is a moving ode to her father and to their shared love of baseball. The word "recollections" in the subtitle rather than "reflections," say, is an apt designation of the book's content, which is charming and endearing, though does not allow access into the author's inner life. The baseball games of Goodwin's New York City youth are dramatically and beautifully narrated--it is refreshing to read about a girl's passion for the sport; her childhood love of the game and the three teams that played in the city in the 1950s is evident in every paragraph. But when Goodwin focuses on herself and her family apart from baseball--her mother was chronically ill and dies in the final pages of the book--she seems content to skim the surface of the story, with emotion held too deeply in check for what ought to have been the book's climax. Yet in the pages giving her childhood perspective on such things as race and the Army-McCarthy hearings, we behold the deep roots of this historian's success in her art. Photos not seen by PW.

WAIT TILL NEXT YEAR, an example of a masterful autobiography read by an equally superb narrator is further proof that "baseball is life." Pulitzer Prize winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, best known for her biography of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, demonstrates how baseball, and her beloved Brooklyn Dodgers, shaped her childhood and her future. The story is charming, and Suzanne Toren gives another flawless reading. Toren perfectly captures the joys and frustrations Goodwin felt during the turbulent 1950s, including the thrill and agony of the annual pennant races, the betrayal she felt when the Dodgers moved away, and the social upheaval caused by the Dodgers' signing of Jackie Robinson. Toren is especially effective conveying Goodwin's youthful optimism, as well as her sadness during her mother's illness and eventual passing. D.J.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine