Gods of Wood and Stone

Di Ionno (The Last Newspaperman) has much to say about what it means to be a strong male in the 21st century in his latest novel comparing two very dissimilar men on a collision path. Joe Grudeck, a retired Boston Red Sox legend, is internationally renowned as a throwback athlete, a catcher who gave his body to the game. He's thrilled to be voted into baseball's hall of fame but worries his health is deteriorating. Then there's Horace Mueller, a historian working as a museum blacksmith in Cooperstown, NY, where Joe will receive his hall of fame induction. Horace believes in work with honor while creating things with his hands yet fails to connect with his son, a baseball prodigy. Oddly, both men pride themselves on physical strength and integrity but are at a loss about how to treat women, who are represented here as either one-night sex conquests or placed on an unobtainable pedestal.