Book Blurbs: July/August

Baseball in St. Louis: From Little Leagues to Major Leagues
Ed Wheatley, 240 pages, nonfiction, Reedy Press, hardcover, $39.95

Author and baseball player Ed Wheatley tells the story of 160 years of baseball in St. Louis in this book. Filled with rich history, incredible photos, and a detailed timeline, Wheatley brings the history of the game and its impact on the St. Louis community to readers. The book chronicles St. Louis baseball from the Major League’s Browns and Cardinals to the Negro Leagues and includes stories of children playing in fields and alleys, conveying a sense of how the game affects more than players and the spectators at the game. The pages are filled with archival photos and documents, bringing the game’s history to life and transporting readers to a day at the ballpark.

Elder Mountain: Journal of Ozarks Studies
Phillip Howerton, editor, 158 pages, periodical, Missouri State University-West Plains, $10

The Ozark region’s literary journal, Elder Mountain, is published once a year by the English department at Missouri State University-West Plains. The journal publishes work that is academic in nature as well as literature and visual art. The journal’s editor, Phillip Howerton, has also released an anthology of Ozarks literature, which appeared in Missouri Life last year. The journal’s tenth
edition will be published later this year, but the ninth edition from 2019, which features writing from Missourians Carla Kirchner  and Craig Albin, can be purchased now. Readers with a particular interest in the Ozarks should pick up a copy.

Follow: Poems
Amy Wright Vollman, 100 pages, poems, Cornerpost Press, softcover, $16.95

Amy Wright Vollman’s new collection of poems are inspired by and rooted firmly in the beauty of the Ozarks. Each of the fifty poems in the book are a reflection on the natural world. Some titles include, “A Map of the World,” “Roundtree Road,” and “Jacket Weather.” The collection also features photographs taken by the author’s son, Jake Vollman, which help add a sense of place to the book. Vollman lives in Springfield and often takes to the woods, caves, and waterfalls on foot or in her kayak (with her trusty mud-proof notebook) for inspiration. Her sense of wonder and play in nature are revealed by the words in her poems.