Shoeless Joe (novel)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search
Shoeless Joe
Author W.P. Kinsella
Country United States
Language English
Genre(s) Novel
Publisher Houghton Mifflin
Publication date 1982
Media type Print (Hardcover, Paperback, e-book)
Pages 265 (Paperback edition)
ISBN ISBN 0-395-32047-X (Paperback edition)

Shoeless Joe is a fantasy novel by W. P. Kinsella. It became much better known because of its film adaptation, Field of Dreams.

Contents

Ray Kinsella lives and farms in Iowa where he produces corn with his wife Annie and their five-year-old daughter Karin. Privately, Kinsella is obsessed with the beauty and history of American baseball, specifically the plight of his hero, Shoeless Joe Jackson, and the "Black Sox" of the 1919 World Series. When he hears a voice telling him to build a baseball field in the midst of his corn crop in order to give his hero a chance at redemption, he blindly follows instructions. The field becomes a conduit to the spirits of baseball legend. Soon, Kinsella is off on a cross-country trip to ease the pain of another hero, the reclusive writer J.D. Salinger, as part of a journey the Philadelphia Inquirer called "not so much about baseball as it is about dreams, magic, life, and what is quintessentially American."

  • Ray Kinsella
  • Richard Kinsella, identical twin brother of Ray
  • Annie Kinsella, wife of Ray
  • Karin Kinsella, daughter of Ray and Annie
  • Mark, Ray's brother-in-law
  • Eddie Scissons, who originally owned Ray's farm and claimed to be the oldest living Chicago Cub
  • J. D. Salinger, the author of The Catcher in the Rye
  • Archibald "Moonlight" Graham, a baseball player who never had a chance at bat in the majors, who then later became a doctor
  • Shoeless Joe Jackson, a baseball player who was among 8 Chicago White Sox accused of being paid to throw the 1919 World Series

  • Redemption
  • Father-and-son bond (bond between Ray and his father)
  • Dreams
  • Unexplained magic
  • New-found life
  • Religion
  • Love
  • Perseverance

The character Moonlight Graham was a real baseball player, whom the author found while looking through The Baseball Encyclopedia. The background of the character is based on his true life, with a few factual liberties taken for artistic reasons.

Shoeless Joe was the winner of the 1982 Books in Canada First Novel Award and a Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship.

Shoeless Joe was later adapted into a screenplay for the 1989 film Field of Dreams by Phil Alden Robinson. The original working title of Field of Dreams was the book's title, Shoeless Joe. Coincidentally, the original title of the book was Dream Field, but the publisher renamed the work Shoeless Joe.

Advanced Search
Included Web Search Engines


Safe Search

close

Top Matching Results

Occasionally Search.com will highlight specialized results that are based on the context of your query. Examples of specialized results include specific links to news, images, or video.

Top Matching Results may highlight information from other Search.com pages, content from the CNET Network of sites, or third party content. The listings are based purely on relevance. Search.com does not receive payment for listings in this section but our partners that provide this data may get paid for listing these products.

Sponsored Links

This section contains paid listings which have been purchased by companies that want to have their sites appear for specific search terms and related content. These listings are administered, sorted and maintained by a third party and are not endorsed by Search.com.

Search Results

Search.com sends your search query to several search engines at one time and integrates the results into one list which has been sorted by relevance using Search.com's proprietary algorithm. You can customize the list of search engines included in your metasearch from the preferences.

The search engines that are used in your metasearch may allow companies to pay to have their Web sites included within the results. To view the Paid Inclusion policy for a specific search engine, please visit their Web site. Search.com does not accept payment or share revenue with any search engine partner for listings in this section.