A striking and surprising debut novel about baseball, betrayal, and the heart and mind of America, "The Man with Two Arms" explores the ways in which families protect, love, and shape each other.

From the Publisher:
Henry Granville, a baseball fanatic and high school teacher, spends hours in the basement with his young son Denny, introducing him to balls of all shapes and sizes. He even turns the basement into an indoor stadium. Enthralled by possibility, Henry begins guiding every instance of Denny's behavior, ensuring that every action performed on one side is matched by an equal action on the other-whether it's throwing a ball, swinging a bat, brushing his teeth, coloring, and even wiping his ass.

Denny quickly distinguishes himself from his peers, most conspicuously by his ability to throw perfectly with either arm, a feat virtually unheard of in baseball. But he also possesses a visionary gift that not even he understands. Denny becomes a superior athlete, skyrocketing through the minor leagues and into the majors where he experiences immediate success, breaking records held for decades.

When a journalist, a former student of Henry's hungry for a national breakout story, exaggerates the teacher's obsession and exposes him to the world as a monster, all hell breaks loose and the pressures of media and celebrity threaten to disrupt the world that Henry and Denny have created. A baseball novel-and much more--"The Man with Two Arms" is a story of the ways in which we protect, betray, forgive, love, and shape each other as we attempt to find our way through life.

Tagged: Fiction - General