Ron Seybold’s STEALING HOME: A Father, A Son, and the Road to the Perfect Game interweaves generational healing with a two-week road trip as he takes his son to nine baseball games across nine state lines.
From Austin, Texas across 3,400 miles in a rented Pontiac Sunbird convertible, author Ron Seybold takes 11-year-old Nicky on a boys-only adventure to one baseball game after another throughout the memoir STEALING HOME. Having uninterrupted time together feels like a miracle for a man who would like to be a real father, without having had much opportunity since becoming bound by rules of post-divorce visitation. But Seybold intends to make the most of these two weeks. Lively with escapade details that include father and son living on fast food, re-wearing wrinkled, mustard-stained clothing, not always remembering to brush their teeth, and in-depth reflection about how they bond over games attended, the book really shines when interweaving recollections from the relationship the author had with his own angry father…and his active determination to parent better.
The teller of this tale grew up during the era when children played unchaperoned outside until streetlights came on, though danger to body and soul might still be found at home. The author’s son is growing up in the early 1990s–a time before WIFI, cell phones and GPS–when the world outside seems perilous, though danger can still lurk at home, if there’s a wounded parent around. Colored with thematic kernels of wisdom gleaned from sports which the author puts to good use when his own torch of anger threatens to light, this is a story of battling demons. Demons from childhood. Demons of anxiety, depression, rage. Demons from mistakes made as an adult. Can such mistakes be mended enough to create a better future? Read this honest, captivating book and find out. STEALING HOME: A Father, A Son, and the Road to the Perfect Game travels all the way until Nicky has reached the age of 30, with sons of his own.
Rich with sports metaphor, STEALING HOME: A Father, A Son, and the Road to the Perfect Game by Ron Seybold, offers a touching and complex look at how, experience by experience, individuals repair generations of fury-fueled despair.
~C.S. Holmes for IndieReader