STILL DOING TIME is, in a sense, a baseball novel without the baseball. It is a sequel to Wanda Adams Fischer’s debut novel, Empty Seats, which featured Jimmy Bailey, an aspiring baseball player whose dream is to make it to the big time.
We begin in Boston in 1975. Jimmy is ending a prison sentence, having served four years for a murder he didn’t commit. Jimmy’s father, a baseball nut who gave up the game to raise a family, coached Jimmy—hoping he would go one better and become a professional. There are parallels here with any number of baseball novels, such as W.P. Kinsella’s Shoeless Joe. Unlike the protagonist of that famous work, however, Jimmy chose poorly, meaning he didn’t even get the alternative of family life—preferring instead to drink his life away among “bad company.” In a sense, Jimmy has become estranged from the sport that was his life; he talks about loving it again, and hopes it will reciprocate. Although Jimmy’s old baseball buddies Bobby Mangino and Bud Prescott are introduced into the novel during its second half, much of the narrative revolves around Jimmy’s cellmate Keeshon, who is brutally beaten as soon as Jimmy is paroled for a supposed homosexual relationship with him.
Among the novel’s plus points are a good structure and a keen ear for exposition. Fischer is attentive to function and motive; a deep familiarity with Boston and its districts adds verisimilitude. However, Fischer leans into melodrama at times, and the copious dialogue segues into soap opera at moments of drama—like when Jimmy’s prospective girlfriend Eileen discusses him (all aglow) with a friend, or Jimmy’s mother sees him for the first time since leaving prison: “Jimmy? Is it really you? It’s not a dream, is it? I’ve been dreaming you’d be back. Is this really happening?” The not infrequent use of anaphora tends in the same direction. Michael Dukakis’s insertion into the novel, though historically accurate—he was governor of Massachusetts in 1975—seems weirdly incongruous. Typesetting is also sometimes faulty, with a few punctuation and capitalization errors that take the sheen off an otherwise sleek presentation.
The prison scenes that begin the novel are a little more problematic. There is more than a touch of the white savior narrative about Jimmy helping his socioeconomically disadvantaged Black cellmate Keeshon to read, especially given the latter’s effusive thankfulness. Keeshon’s demeanor here seems ill-judged; lines such as “Oh, man, Jim, you changed my life. You been my frien’ and teacha. Don’t know what I’ll do when you gone” evoke several fairly unpleasant tropes about what used to be called race relations. Jimmy’s Harvard-educated sister Debbie goes through similar machinations, pulling strings at high levels to ease Keeshon’s way through the prison system—even referring to Keeshon as her “project” at one point. There is nothing in the novel that suggests this was done unkindly, but it does display a profound lack of understanding about racial sensitivities and mars an otherwise serviceable and diverting story.
Wanda Adams Fischer’s STILL DOING TIME is well structured and a diverting read.
~Craig Jones for IndieReader